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Some Judaeo-Arabic Karaite Fragments In The British Museum Collection1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

H. Ben-Shammai
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Extract

This volume of Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic fragments was acquired from M. Shapira in July 1882 along with many Karaite MSS, but unlike them has not been catalogued. From the ‘Descriptive list of acquisitions’ (in MS) at the Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts, it may be gathered that MSS Or. 2581–2 constituted, when acquired, two volumes, while at a later date 2581 had been divided into two volumes (A and B, described in Margoliouth's Catalogue Nos. 329–30), which fact apparently caused Or. 2582 to be overlooked. However, 10 folios of the MS had already been described by S. Poznański (Festschrift Steinschneider, Leipzig, 1896, 207–8) as being part of maqāla iv of al-Qirqisāni's al-Anwār. This identification was subsequently copied by M. Steinschneider, Die arabische Literatur der Juden, Frankfurt a. M., 1902, 79, and also in the index to Margoliouth's Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan MSS in the BM.

Type
Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , February 1975 , pp. 126 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1975

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References

2 cf. also my article ’A note on some Karaite copies of Mu'tazilite writings’, BSOAS, XXXII, 2, 1974, 295–304.Google Scholar

3 This may be a lapsus calami, since Nisan A.M. 5368 must correspond to the end of A.H. 1016.

4 He copied also six MSS kept in the Hebrew collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Cf. Poznaṅski, S., Zeitschrifi für Hebräische Bibliographie, xix, 1916, pp. 91 (no. 73), 92 (no. 84); G. Vajda, Deux cotnmentaires Karaïtes sur l'Ecclésiaste, 1971, 115.Google Scholar

5 His literary activities and his relationship to the Karaite collection of the BM deserve a separate investigation, which I hope to undertake on some future occasion.

6 A linguistic examination of this MS (which is, however, beyond the scope of this note), and a comparison with Or. 5062 (Catalogue, No. 286), which has similar linguistic features, and was copied in Cairo (the word Miṣr is not recorded in the Catalogue), show that Or. 2510 was copied in Cairo as well. As already mentioned, Joseph b. Kaṣōn lived and worked in Cairo.