Sefer ha-Musar (Book of Moral Instruction) Zakharia al-Dahiri [Yemen: 17th century]

217 leaves (166 x 112 mm). collation: 1⁸, 2⁶, 3-4⁴, 5⁶, 6-7⁴, 8-10⁸, 11⁴, 12⁸, 13-14⁴, 15-16⁸, 17-18⁴, 19⁶, 20-21⁴, 22⁸, 23-24⁴, 25-28⁸, 29⁴, 30⁶, 31⁹, 32⁸, 33⁴, 34⁸, 35-36⁶= 217 leaves; f. 80v blank. Written in black ink on Italian sized and polished paper in Yemenite semi cursive Hebrew script, 16-22 lines; headings in square script; a few penwork decorations. ff. 1-18, 211-217 in another, later hand, in brown ink, 33 lines. First and final leaves strengthened at margins; a few headlines shaved; some staining throughout.18th century calf, worn; rebacked; ties renewed.

Sefer ha-Musar is an engaging collection of folk tales, animal fables, riddles, and travel accounts, interwoven with pious admonitions, religious polemics, messianic speculations, and philosophical and kabbalistic meditations. Zechariah Aldahiri (c. 1519—1585) composed this work in 1568, while incarcerated along with the rest of the Sana’a Jewish community by the Muslim authorities, who suspected the Jews of sympathizing with the forces of the Ottoman occupation. Sefer ha-Musar is written in elevated and exuberant rhymed prose, rife with puns and scriptural verse fragments cleverly lifted out of context, and interspersed with metrical poems. Its language is largely biblical Hebrew, though Aldahiri also draws freely on rabbinic and medieval Hebrew as well as talmudic Aramaic. Composed of forty-five self-contained chapters, or maqamat (Hebrew: mahbarot), the work is at once didactic and delightfully entertaining, soberly instructive and hilariously diverting. In Yehuda Ratzaby’s introduction to the critical edition, he demonstrates the importance of Sefer ha-Musar as a source for the political, intellectual, and cultural history of eastern Jewish communities in the 16th century, particularly those of Yemen and the Land of Israel.

LITERATURE:
Yehudah Ratzaby, Sefer hamusar: Mahberot rabbi zekhariah al-dahiri, Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1965; Adena Tanenbaum, "Of a Pietist Gone Bad and Des(s)erts Not Had: The Fourteenth Chapter of Zechariah Aldahiri's Sefer hamusar,"  Prooftexts , Vol. 23, No. 3 (October 2003), pp. 297-319.

PROVENANCE:
Salman Schocken, MS 13207