ENA 3734.12 + ENA 2643.12 + ENA 2643.11 + ENA 3734.13

תיאור

טקסט ספרותי ביהודית-ערבית מהמאה ה-10. מוחזק בבית המדרש לרבנים.

Princeton Geniza Project description: Four consecutive folios from the introduction to an anonymous philosophical-polemical treatise defending Jewish prayer and law against the criticism of Muslims. Contains the only known mention in a geniza fragment of the Fatimid vizier Yaʿqūb b. Killis. Following an ornamental proem (dībāja, literally, brocade) closely modeled on the introduction to Saʿadya Gaʾon's siddur, the author recounts how "the most illustrious vizier Yaʿqūb b. Yūsuf" (Ibn Killis), at his regular majlis where religions were discussed in the presence of littérateurs, mutakallimūn, philosophers, and physicians, displayed an Arabic-script translation of Saʿadya's siddur Kitāb Jāmiʿ al-Ṣalawāt wa-l-Tasābīḥ), whereupon he and the assembled Muslims ridiculed Jewish prayers and beliefs to the shame of the Rabbanites and Qaraites present. The author, evidently a rabbinic scholar and disciple of Saʿadya, responds by praising the excellence of Jewish law and liturgy, citing Deuteronomy 4:6–8 in Saʿadya's tafsīr. Cohen and Somekh suggest that the account corroborates Ibn Khallikān's anecdote about Ibn Killis's majlis and may even describe the same incident. They also argue that the author's decision to confront the vizier with verses from the Torah implies that he regarded Ibn Killis as still, in some sense, answerable to his origins. The blessing "may God sustain his high station" after the vizier's name indicates that Ibn Killis was alive and in office when the treatise was composed, suggesting a dating for the text of 979–91 CE. Cohen and Somekh argue that the treatise was originally written in Arabic script for a Muslim audience, and this copy is a transcription into Hebrew characters for Jewish readers, datable on paleographic grounds to the tenth or early eleventh century. Order: ENA 3734.12; ENA 2643.12; ENA 2643.11; ENA 3734.13. First two leaves ed. and trans. Mark R. Cohen and Sasson Somekh, "In the Court of Yaʿqūb Ibn Killis: A Fragment from the Cairo Genizah," JQR n.s. 80 (1990), 283–314; revised translation (given below) in Mark R. Cohen and Sasson Somekh, “Interreligious Majalis in Early Fatimid Egypt,” in Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, et al., eds., The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999), 128–36. Leaves 3 and 4 edited and translated in Sasson Somekh, "Remnants of a Polemical Work from the Cairo Geniza" (Hebrew), in Sefer Shivtiel: meḥqarim ba-lashon ha-ʿivrit uve-mesorot ha-ʿedot, ed. Yitzhak Gluska and Semah Kesar (Ramat-Gan, 1992), 141–59. MR