Handwritten book, ink on parchment: Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra's Commentaries - Italy, circa 1300

A whole book, fully pristine, with no missing pages, preserved in an excellent condition. Legible as if only written yesterday. 72 pages, tendon-sewn. Italy, circa 1300.

 

Description of the manuscript by Dr. Benjamin Richler, retired director of the institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, National Library of Israel, an expert on manuscripts:

CONTENTS:

The manuscript includes R. Abraham ibn Ezra's commentaries on the Five Scrolls and the Book of Daniel.

Ff. 3r-[6]r: Commentary on the Book of Ruth.

Ff. [6]r-16v: Commentary on Song of Songs (Canticles).

Ff. 17r-50v: Commentary on Ecclesiastes.

Ff. 51r-58v: Commentary on Lamentations.

Ff. 58v-66v: Commentary on the Book of Esther.

Ff. 67r-71v: The beginning of the short commentary on the Book of Daniel, copied by the scribe only until near the end of the commentary of the second prophecy. This version of the commentary was first published by H.J. Mathews in 1877. A century later, in 1977, Aaron Mondshein published the text in his doctoral dissertation on this version of the commentary.  Mondshein identified nine manuscripts of this text, but only one of them included the complete text. One of the manuscripts he listed is the present one, but he did not examine it or even knew that it still existed (see below).

At the beginning of the manuscript on f. 2v, the scribe added a short note on the Soul that he found in a Christian text.

 

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:

The manuscript is very well preserved in a rare near pristine condition. The ink retains its original dark brown colour. With the exception of the blank  last leaf that serves as the back cover, the parchment is completely undamaged.

Parchment. 25x15 cm. 72 folios (the foliation in pencil is late and faulty. Folio 1 is in fact the cover. One folio between fols. 5 and 6 was skipped over and not foliated and I called it fol. [6]).

 Copied around 1300 (ca. 1275-1340) in a neat Italian semi-cursive script  by a scribe named Moshe who pointed out the letters  spelling his name at the beginning of lines on ff. 41r, 43r, 54r, 57v, 61r, 61v and 62r. 

Quires 1-5 are constructed of 5 sheets, quire 6 of 6 sheets and quire 7 of 5 sheets, the last leaf of which (fol. 72) is blank and forms the back cover of the manuscript.

Ruling by hard point  and pricking at the outer sides of each leaf.

Original covers. Front cover is a single parchment leaf and back cover is the last leaf of the final quire.

 

PROVENANCE:

One of the early owners of the manuscript listed the contents on fol. 2r and wrote that it included Ibn Ezra's commentaries on the Five Scrolls and the Book of Daniel, as well as Judah ibn Hayyuj's grammatical treatise Sefer Otot ha-Noach (translated from the Arabic by Ibn Ezra). This last work is no longer in the manuscript.  An owner from the 16^th or 17^th cent. signed his name: Samuel. On folio 71v another owner signed his name: Ishmael ibn Nachman, who was also the owner of Parma, Biblioteca Palatina MS 2875, Ibn Ezra's commentary on the Pentateuch and in his signature there he noted that he was from Pisa. The censor Camillo Jaghel signed his name in 1619 on the same page.

On the front cover and on fol. 2r later owners added call-numbers or catalogue numbers: No. 13, No. 49 and No. 55. At first glance at No. 13 I thought I recognized the hand of the scholar and book-collector Solomon Joachim Halberstamm.  In fact, on pp. 14 and 15 in the introduction to his edition of Ibn Ezra's work Sefer Ibbur (1874), Halberstamm  referred to a copy of Ibn Ezra's short edition of the commentary on Daniel in his possession. Mathews made use of this manuscript for variant readings in his 1877 edition of the commentary on Daniel and noted that it was incomplete and ended with the words מן הגוי just as it does in our manuscript. In 1890, Halberstamm published a catalogue of his collection, Kohelet Shelomo, but our manuscript is not listed there. It is known that Halberstamm occasionally sold manuscripts, and we may assume that he sold this volume sometime between 1877 and 1890. This manuscript is not listed in the computerized catalogue of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in the National Library of Israel and we may assume that it was in private hands since the end of the 19^th century.

 

Professor Malachi Beit-Arié, retired director of the national library, an expert on manuscripts, adds a clarification re the author of this manuscript:

The handwriting and the material practices and craftsmanship of the manuscript of the commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra on the five Scrills and Daniel resemble a few manuscripts with indication of their date of completion (colophon) written in Italy in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, such as MS London, the British Library Additional 14763, which was written in Vitero in 1272 and particularly MS Jerusalem, The National Library Heb. 8⁰ 4128, written in 1282, and to some manuscripts which were written at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

The manuscript was written by a scribe whose name was Moshe, the name that is highlighted in several pages  following a common practice of Hebrew scribes. Among the existing Italian manuscripts of that period, we don’t find a manuscript which was written by Moshe. However, the is a manuscript which was undoubtedly written by the same scribe. This is a manuscript which is kept in the renowned Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford – MS Bodl. Or. 597 (Neubauer Catalogue no. 222). The handwriting of both manuscripts is identical and similarly the graphic features which are employed in addition to the script, such as dividing exceeding words at the end of lines by separating the auxiliary letters from the rest of the word and singling them out by vocalization and the Tetragrammaton shape.

Moreover, Moshe copied in the Oxford manuscript also the commentary of Ibn Ezra – the whole  commentary on the Pentateuch, and it is likely that he copied all his commentary in several volumes. At the end of the Oxford manuscript the scribe wrote a colophon in which he specified that he wrote the commentary for his brother, and completed the copying in 28 Shevat 5071 (1311, but his name (and his father's name), originally also specified, were erased from the colophon and until now was not known. Thanks to our manuscript his name, Moshe, will be restored, and would be added to the recently-published supplement to the old Neubauer Catalogue of the Bodleian Library, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to Vol. I (A. Neubauer's Catalogue). Compiled under the direction of Malachi Beit-Arié, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994.