Pentateuch with the Commentary of Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, Scribe: Moses ben Saadiah ben Judah ben David al-Qati‘i, Madhab (Yemen), 1679

A beautifully executed copy of a famous biblical commentary, with a historically significant colophon.

Jacob ben Asher (ca. 1269-1343) was a prominent Ashkenazic rabbinic authority who, in the early fourteenth century, apparently joined his father, Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel, in immigrating from Germany to Toledo. Best known as the author of the Arba‘ah turim, a Jewish legal code in four parts, R. Jacob also composed a seminal commentary on the Pentateuch divided in two: a shorter gloss drawing mainly on the Franco-German homiletical tradition (editio princeps: Constantinople, 1514), as well as a longer gloss focused on the plain-sense meaning of the biblical text (editio princeps: Zolkiew, 1806). Probably due to its concise, colorful, creative, and at times even surprising content, the former commentary achieved far greater renown, especially once Hebrew printers began incorporating it into their Rabbinic Bibles, starting with the Venice edition of 1546-1548.

The present lot is a masterfully rendered Pentateuch in four volumes featuring the biblical text in the center, surrounded by the Masorah magna arrayed in a zigzag pattern, with the Masorah parva and the shorter commentary of R. Jacob ben Asher placed in the outer margins. (It seems likely that the scribe had before him an exemplar of the second edition of this commentary, published in Venice in 1544; see, e.g., the formatting of the introduction [1:10].) The copyist had a well-developed aesthetic sensibility, as evidenced by the geometrically arranged verses comprising micrographic designs at the front of the first volume (pp. 1-2, 5-6).

These manuscripts feature several types of marginal additions, two of which appear to be related to the production of a Torah scroll: a notation every three pages marking what would be the beginning of a new column in a traditional Yemenite scroll of 51 lines per column (totaling 226 columns; see 4:118) and a running tally of the number of occurrences of the Tetragrammaton (totaling 1,814 occurrences; see 4:120). Both would have been useful to scribes undertaking this sacred task.

At the close of the fourth tome is a colophon of no mean historical value. It states that the copyist, Moses ben Saadiah ben Judah ben David al-Qati‘i, completed his work on Thursday, 21 Sivan 1990 AG (June 1, 1679 CE) in the town of Madhab in south-central Yemen. Al-Qati‘i goes on to beg the reader’s indulgence in the event he finds a mistake in these manuscripts, “since due to our many sins, our troubles have multiplied to the point that we are drained of strength, our distresses have increased, and the light of our hearts has darkened. For in this year the sacred synagogue of San’a was destroyed and Israel was sent into exile.” The reference here appears to be the beginning of what came to be known as the Mawza Exile, when the imam Al-Mahdi Ahmad ordered the destruction of synagogues throughout Yemen (starting in San’a) and the expulsion of its Jewish population to the barren southern district of Mawza. This colophon helps establish the date of the initial stages of that highly traumatic episode.

These volumes eventually passed into the hands of the nasi Isaac ben David ben Jacob, a Baghdadi grandee who immigrated to Surat, where he passed away on Thursday night, 7 Heshvan 5551 (October 14, 1790); one of his descendants was Sir Sassoon Jacob Hai David (1849-1926), Chairman of the Bank of India. They were also owned by Jacob ben Abraham al-Tan‘ami, the scribe of a different biblical manuscript (Sassoon 830) copied in Cochin in 1825 on behalf of another member of the al-Qati‘i family, Abraham ben Shalom ben Moses. In addition, several inscriptions in the third and fourth volumes record marriages, deaths, and a birth between the years 1813-1824. The set was eventually purchased by David Solomon Sassoon through Maggs Bros. on November 1, 1928.

Provenance

1. Saadia ibn Abraham al-Dhamari (1:10)
2. Isaac ben David ben Jacob (1:10, 2:144, 3:1)
3. Jacob ben Abraham al-Tan‘ami (1:10, 3:1)

Physical Description

4 volumes (11 1/8 x 7 5/8 in.; 280 x 195 mm) on Yemenite (unmarked) paper; modern pagination in pencil in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corners; midpoints of quires generally marked in the upper-right and lower-left corners of the middle opening; written in Yemenite square (biblical text) and semi-cursive (Masorah and commentary) scripts in black ink; single-column biblical text of seventeen lines per page, with additional text in the upper, outer, and lower margins; ruled with a mastara (ruling board); justification of lines via dilation or contraction of final letters and insertion of space fillers; horizontal catchwords generally at the base of each column of commentary; Tiberian accentuation and vocalization of text, occasionally displaying characteristic Yemenite confusion of patah and segol; Tetragrammaton (in commentary) abbreviated to three yodin in an upside-down triangular formation surmounted by a short wavy line; marginal numeration of aliyyot and instances of the Tetragrammaton (the latter count restarting on 3:155); tally of verses and mnemonic given after each parashah; masoretic information given after each of the Five Books; masoretic totals (midpoints plus numbers of verses, sedarim, parashiyyot, words, and letters) inscribed on 4:121-122; parashah introduced with a marginal Star of David (see also 1:66, 70, 2:39, 42, 73, 113); marginal notation of various biblical midpoints (1:95, 2:74, 3:24, 54, 175) and of pe’in lefufot (and several other otiyyot meshunnot; see, e.g., 2:43-44, 65, 3:130, 155, 202, 4:2, 61); pe used to indicate that a line at the top or bottom of a page is intentionally left blank; episodic corrections and some later marginalia (at times cropped), including in Judeo-Arabic (1:143). Four micrographic carpet pages composed of verses from Psalms and Proverbs inscribed in geometric patterns (1:1-2, 5-6); Masorah magna inscribed in a zigzag pattern in outer and lower (and episodically inner) margins; tagin (crownlets) added intermittently to some letters (e.g., 2:43-44, 65, 4:61, 110); the Song of the Sea (2:49-51) and the Song of Moses (4:112-116) are either (in the second case) written in two mini-columns with a space in between or (in the first case) made to look like brickwork; upside-down, backward letters nun on 3:149. Leather over cardboard, scratched, worn, and bumped (especially vol. 3); paper tickets with volume number and shelf mark affixed to upper boards and spines, respectively; spines partially exposed; remnants of leather ties at edges of upper and lower boards; premodern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

Vol. 1: 181 pages (collation: i⁵ [i₁ canceled], ii-vi⁸, vii⁷ [vii₄ canceled, with stub present], viii-ix⁸, x⁷ [x₆ canceled, with stub present], xi-xii⁸ +1) (pp. 3-4, 7-9 blank). Slight scattered staining and dampstaining; thumbing; ink biting a bit; occasional, minor worming in or near gutters; short tear in upper margin of p. 1; short tear in lower edge of pp. 12-13; natural paper defect on pp. 40-41; slight damage in lower and outer edges of pp. 74-75.

Vol. 2: 145 pages (collation: i-ix⁸ +1) (pagination: 1-79, 79-144). Scattered staining and thumbing; small wormholes in gutter toward head throughout and in lower margins of pp. 1-14; tear in lower edge of pp. 31-32.

Vol. 3: 244 pages (collation: i-xv⁸ +2). Slight worming in upper margins of pp. 1-38, 129-140, in lower margins of pp. 1-42, in gutter at foot of pp. 165-222, in lower-outer corners of pp. 211-244, and near upper-outer corners of pp. 207-244; pp. 1-66 loose; minor damage in lower edges of p. 27-28; repair in gutter at head of pp. 229-244; small tears in lower-outer corners of pp. 239-244; pp. 239-244 reinforced along gutters.

Vol. 4: 122 pages (collation: i⁶ [i_1-2 canceled], ii-vii⁸, viii⁷ [viii₈ canceled]). Repair in gutter of p. 37; slight worming in lower margins of pp. 77-86 and in outer margins of pp. 120-122.

Literature

Aaron Ahrend, “Ha-peirush ha-katsar shel ba‘al ha-turim la-torah,” Mahanayim 3 (December 1992): 180-187.

Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Yehudei bavel ba-tefutsot (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1985), 45.

Moshe Gavra, Entsiklopedyah la-kehillot ha-yehudiyyot be-teiman, vol. 2 (Bnei Brak: Ha-Makhon le-Heker Hakhmei Teiman, 2005), 294-296.

S.D. Goitein, “Battei ha-yehudim u-shekhunoteihem be-ir san‘a,” in Ha-teimanim: historiyyah, sidrei hevrah, hayyei ha-ruah: mivhar mehkarim, ed. Menahem Ben-Sasson (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1983), 143-144.

Jacob ben Asher, Peirush ba‘al ha-turim al ha-torah, ed. Yaakov Koppel Reinitz, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1993), xi.

David Solomon Sassoon, Ohel Dawid: Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, London, vol. 2 ([Oxford]: Oxford University Press; London: Humphrey Milford, 1932), 578 (no. 15), 1091-1092 (nos. 1037-1040).

David Solomon Sassoon, “The Surat Jewish Cemetry [sic],” The Jewish Tribune: The Organ of Indian Jewry 2,7 (September 1934): 34.

David Solomon Sassoon, “The Surat Jewish Cemetery,” The Jewish Tribune: The Organ of Indian Jewry 2,11 (January 1935): 18.

Yehuda Shaviv, “Ha-peirush ha-arokh shel ba‘al ha-turim la-torah,” Mahanayim 3 (December 1992): 170-179.