Moreh ha-Nevukhim (The Guide for the Perplexed) in Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew Translation, Rabbis Moses Maimonides and Samuel Ibn Tibbon, [Middle East, 15th-16th century]

After having completed his halakhic magnum opus, the Mishneh torah, Maimonides turned his attention to the difficulty faced by rationalistically inclined Jews in trying to integrate their faith with Aristotelian philosophy. The final result was Dalālat al-ḥāʼirīn

(lit., The Instruction of the Perplexed), a landmark in the history of Jewish thought that, with its treatment of such topics as anthropomorphism, prophecy, Providence, cosmogony, ethics, and political science, has exerted enormous influence on both Jews and Gentiles from the Middle Ages down to the present day. As with most of Maimonides’ compositions, the book was originally written in Judeo-Arabic but was quickly translated into Hebrew, in this case by Rabbi Samuel Ibn Tibbon (ca. 1150-ca. 1230) and, separately, by Rabbi Judah al-Harizi (1165-1225). While the Judeo-Arabic version continued to circulate, especially among Mizrahi and Yemenite Jewry, most European Jews knew it only in its Hebrew recensions, both titled

Moreh ha-nevukhim

(lit., The Guide for the Perplexed).

The present lot is an important exemplar of the work containing both the Judeo-Arabic original (outer column) and Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew adaptation (inner column) on each page. While it was used by the great Orientalist Hartwig Hirschfeld (1854-1934) in comments he made at the end of the nineteenth century to Salomon Munk’s (1803-1867) Judeo-Arabic edition, with French translation, of 1856-1866—Hirschfeld considered the manuscript to be

sehr correct (very correct)—it seems to have largely escaped the attention of contemporary scholars who have sought in recent years to compile lists of extant manuscripts that could be used in the production of much-needed critical editions of both the original text and Ibn Tibbon’s translation. Such editions could potentially greatly aid scholars in identifying the various drafts of the work as written by Maimonides and as rendered by Ibn Tibbon. The manuscript ends with the beginning of Pirkei mosheh, a Moreh-related philosophical and astrological treatise in five short chapters by the physician Rabbi Moses ben Joshua of Narbonne (d. 1362), who also composed a separate, full-length commentary on the Moreh.

In addition to its textual value, this manuscript claims a distinguished pedigree. It was owned by two famous Iraqi book collectors: the scholar and poet Sliman ben David Ma‘tuk in the early eighteenth century and Faraj Hayyim ben Abdullah Joseph (d. 1844), great-grandfather of David Solomon Sassoon, in the early nineteenth century. Subsequently, Hirschfeld’s father-in-law, Louis Loewe (1809-1888), a prominent British Jewish educator and confidant of Moses Montefiore, purchased the work from Nissim Farhi (brother of the famed Hayyim Farhi) of Damascus in 1851, over twelve years after having first become aware of its existence during a trip to the Middle East undertaken in the late 1830s. Following Loewe’s death, his library was divided among his two sons-in-law, Hirschfeld and Rabbi Adolph Kurrein, and his son, James H. Loewe, with the theological material—including the present manuscript—going to Hirschfeld. As already mentioned, the latter used it in reviewing Munk’s Judeo-Arabic Moreh. (In a letter to Louis Loewe dated December 8, 1862, Munk had praised this manuscript as eine wichtige Autirotät [an important authority].) After Hirschfeld’s passing in 1934, his daughters sought the help of their uncle James in selling items from their deceased father’s collection. A small catalogue was produced that caught the attention of David Solomon Sassoon, who proceeded to buy the Moreh manuscript. In a letter dated May 20, 1937, Loewe wrote to Sassoon: “I am sending it to you tomorrow by hand. It will include all the relevant printed material, together with Munk’s letter, and I feel sure that it will add lustre to your own valuable collection.”

Contents

ff. 1v-77r: introductions and Part I;

f. 77v: poems for each part;

ff. 78r-141v: Part 2;

ff. 142r-228r: Part 3;

ff. 228v-231r: index of biblical verses;

ff. 231r-232r: table of contents;

f. 232r-v: summary of contents;

f. 232v: beginning of Pirkei mosheh.

Provenance

1. Sliman Ma‘tuk, gift from Solomon Sofer ben Rahamim Matsliah (ff. 1r, 228r, pastedown of lower board)
2. Samuel Shefi(?) (pastedown of lower board)
3. Faraj Hayyim Abdullah Joseph Faraj, bought from Abraham ben Sason Mordechai Hazzan, Baghdad, 25 Menahem [Av] 5564 [August 2, 1804] (f. 1r)
4. Dr. L. Loewe, bought from Nissim ben Menahem Farhi, 2. Buckingham Place, Brighton, England, Tuesday, Parashat va-yera 5612 [November 11, 1851] (f. 1r)
5. H. Hirschfeld (pastedown of upper board), thence by descent to his daughters (annexed correspondence)
6. David Solomon Sassoon

Physical Description

232 folios (11 5/8 x 8 1/8 in.; 296 x 206 mm) (collation: i⁴, ii⁸, iii-iv⁶, v¹⁰ +2, vi-vii⁸, viii-xiii¹⁰, xiv⁸, xv-xvi¹⁰, xvii¹², xviii¹⁰ +1, xix-xxiii¹², xxiv⁹ [xxiv_10-12 lacking]) on paper; modern foliation in pencil in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corners of rectos; written in neat Eastern square (headings and incipits) and semi-cursive (text body) scripts in black ink; double-column text of varying numbers of lines per page, the outer column (Judeo-Arabic) text size slightly larger than that of the inner column (Hebrew); ruled with a mastara (ruling board); justification of lines via dilation or contraction of final letters, insertion of space fillers, suspension of final letters, use of anticipatory letters, abbreviation, and slanted inscription of final words; (slanted) catchwords near foot of most versos; Tetragrammaton abbreviated to three yodin in a triangular formation followed by a wavy line (Tetragrammaton from another manuscript pasted in outer margin of f. 73v); marginal chapter numeration on ff. 8v-27r; corrections, strikethroughs (e.g., f. 20v), and/or marginalia (including in Judeo-Arabic) in primary and secondary hands (modern pencil marks on f. 9r-v). Periodic simple floral motifs, sometimes accompanied by the word sullam (ladder). Probably lacking three folios at the end; scattered staining; dampstaining; some dog-earing; corners rounded; short tears near lower-outer corners of ff. 1-2, in upper edges of ff. 5, 84, 90, 191, in lower edges of ff. 7-8, 37, 47, 57, 151, 197, and in outer edges of ff. 112, 118, 150-151; repairs in outer edges and gutters of ff. 1-3, with slight losses of text; repairs in outer edges of ff. 4, 152, 163, in gutters of ff. 23, 26, 29-37, and in lower edges of ff. 67, 127; long tear in gutter of f. 4; small hole in f. 32, affecting a couple of words; ink transfers on ff. 136v-137r; lower portion of f. 149 from a different paper stock, glued to the main page; small worm track in lower-outer corners of ff. 156-159; ff. 201-210, 227-228 loose at head; repairs in gutters and short tears in edges of ff. 230-232. Original(?) leather over cardboard centered by a blind-tooled diamond and framed by elegantly blind-tooled interlace work, scratched, worn, wormed, and partly exposed; spine rebacked; spine in four compartments with raised bands; paper tickets with title and shelf mark affixed to spine; “LL” (Louis Loewe) lettered in lowest compartment of spine; two intact leather ties catching on edge of upper board; early paper pastedowns, incorporating a portion of a Judeo-Arabic Yemenite manuscript on the upper board. Annexed correspondence, notes, and publications relating to the manuscript. 

Literature

Paul B. Fenton, “The Second Ibn Tibbon: Salomon Munk and His Translation of the Guide,” in Josef Stern, James T. Robinson, and Yonatan Shemesh (eds.), Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed in Translation: A History from the Thirteenth Century to the Twentieth (London; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 181-207, at pp. 192, 196 n. 54.

Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed: Towards a Critical Edition,” in Siegfried Stein and Raphael Loewe (eds.), Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History Presented to Alexander Altmann on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1979), 133-142.

Hartwig Hirschfeld, “Die Handschriften Dr. L. Loewe’s,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 38,8-9 (1893-1894): 360-366, 404-414, at pp. 409-411 (no. XVI).

Hartwig Hirschfeld, “Kritische Bemerkungen zu Munk’s Ausgabe des Dalālat AlḤāirīn,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 39,9-10 (1894-1895): 404-413, 460-473.

Hartwig Hirschfeld, “The Arabic Portion of the Cairo Genizah at Cambridge: Two Autograph Fragments of Maimonides’ Dalālat al Ḥā’irin,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 15,4 (July 1903): 677-697, at pp. 677-678.

Y. Tzvi Langermann, “The India Office Manuscript of Maimonides’s Guide: The Earliest Complete Copy in the Judaeo-Arabic Original,” The British Library Journal 21,1 (Spring 1995): 66-70.

Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Supplementary List of Manuscripts and Fragments of Dalālat al-Ḥā’irīn,” Maimonidean Studies 4 (2000): 31-37.

James H. Loewe (ed.), A Descriptive Catalogue of a Portion of the Library of the Late Dr. Louis Loewe (London, 1895), 6, 64-65 (no. XVI).

Louis Loewe, letter in Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 3,21 (February 16, 1839): 83-84.

Moses Maimonides, Le guide des égarés, trans. Salomon Munk, 3 vols. (Paris: A. Franck, 1856-1866).

Moses Maimonides, Moreh ha-nevukhim: dalālat al-ḥāʼirīn: makor ve-tirgum, trans. Joseph Kafih, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1972).

Moses Maimonides, Dalālat al-ḥāʼirīn, ed. Hüseyin Atay (Ankara: Ankara University Divinity Faculty, 1974).

Sassoon 1240 (not catalogued in Ohel Dawid)

Yehuda Seewald, “Akdamot le-mahadurah metukkenet shel moreh nevukhim be-tirgum rabbi shemu’el ibn tibbon u-behinat hevdelei ha-mahadurot shel tirgum rashbat,” Ha-ma‘yan 62,4 (242) (Tammuz 5782): 240-254.

Colette Sirat, “Pirkei mosheh le-mosheh narboni,” Tarbiz 39,3 (April 1970): 287-306.

Colette Sirat, “Une liste de manuscrits: préliminaire à une nouvelle édition du Dalālat al-Hāyryn,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 58 (1991): 9-29.

Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 288-289.

Colette Sirat and Silvia Di Donato, Maïmonide et les brouillons autographes du Dalâlat al-Ḥâ’irîn (Guide des égarés) (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2011).

https://www.kurrein.com/Loewe/d7.htm#c203