אל-מסדה: פנקס בית הדין של קהילת יהודי צנעא במאה ה-18 [Al-Misawwadeh: Bēth-Dīn (Court) Records of the Sanʿānī Jewish Community in the Eighteenth Century] (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCIII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2003) 593-596 Yehuda Nini, ed. 18-n tìhoi hvm >t??> rt»np pv ?t? n>3 s?3? :mit>n-i>N [Al-Misawwadeh: Bëth-Dîn (Court) Records ofthe San'âni Jewish Community in the Eighteenth Century], vol. 1. Translated into Hebrew by Nissim B. Gamlieli. Tel Aviv: The Diaspora Research Institute, Tel Aviv University, 2001. Pp. 89 + 469 + 2 (English abstract). The Arabic term musawwadah denotes "a draft," "notes," or "a daybook ." The volume under review, titled Al-Misawwadeh, reflects the pronunciation of the San(ânï Arabic dialect. This volume contains 1,372 of the misawwadeh documents, constituting records of judgments passed by the Beth Din ("rabbinical court") of the Jewish Community of Sancä', dating from the early 18th century to the 1860s. They are written in the JudeoArabic dialect that was prevalent among the Jews of Sancä\ Judeo-Arabic, as is well known, is written in the Arabic language using Hebrew characters , a fact which is also true of the misawwadeh texts. The documents are characterized by brevity, registering only the final judgment rendered by the court without any reference to the halakhic basis for these rulings. Despite their economy of expression, they are remarkably lucid. The records contained in this volume are provided both in the original Judeo-Arabic and in Hebrew translation. The arduous task of the translation was undertaken by Nissim B. Gamlieli, a Yemeni scholar well known for his expertise in Yemeni Arabic in general, and Yemeni Judeo-Arabic in particular. He is to be commended for his meticulously accurate translation , which reflects the felicity and beauty of diction of the original JudeoArabic texts. It should be noted that despite the fast growing body of scholarship relating to the history and other aspects of the Jews of Yemen, our knowledge of this community is still relatively sparse. The few chronicles written by the Yemeni Jews themselves cover only the past few hundred years, and even then they do not provide a systematic presentation of the historical events that befell the Jews of Yemen, nor of their customs and socioeconomic conditions. These chronicles are presented as snapshots of selected events that pass before us in a fragmented and incoherent procession, replete with gaps. Several factors account for the scarcity of records relating to the Jews of Yemen. One may be the high cost and rarity of writing materials and the total lack of printing facilities. As late as the beginning of the 20th century, as noted by Ameen Rihani, paper was a very rare commodity in Yemen. The scantiness of writing facilities in Yemen undoubtedly accounts for the marvelous ability of the Yemeni Jews to read a book sideways or upside down and from all possible corners. This ability was developed as a result of the necessity of the Yemeni Jewish children to study the Hebrew Scriptures and other sacred writings seated around one single copy of a book. 594THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW The scarcity of writing materials may also account for the selective attitude which the Yemeni Jews had developed toward their own writings. Manuscripts which had practical value were copied and preserved. Some were used as flyleaves for the binding of sacred books, while others were discarded and subsequently sank into oblivion. Thus, for example, only fragments of the work of Rabbi Yehia Salih (1715-1805), who is known to have written a history of the Jews of Yemen, are extant. Moreover, many of the written records must have been destroyed in the course of the frequent political upheavals that in many cases had a devastating impact upon Sanca\ the Yemeni capital, in general and the Jewish community in particular. Most destructive, however, was the expulsion of the Jews of Sanca' and other locales in Yemen to the remote region of Mawzac in 1679/80, an event which was preceded by the demolition of synagogues. Extant Yemeni Jewish documents relate that scrolls and writings housed in synagogues were torn and trampled upon by the mob, while others were burned; still others were abandoned by the Jews who would not carry them into exile. This state of affairs underscores the...