Meshal Haqadmoni: Fables from the Distant Past (review)

280ReviewsLa corónica 34.1, 2005 Isaac Ihn Saluda. Meshal Haqadmoni: Fables from the Distant Past. Ed. and Trans. Raphael Loeive. 2 vols. Oxford. UK and Portland. Oregon: The Litiman Library ofJewish Civilization. 2004. exxxi + 816 pp. ISBN l874774 -56-0 As the reign of .Alfonso X el Sabio drew to a close, the itinerant Castilian scholar and jilivsician Isaac ihn .Salitila was hard at work comjileling an ambitious literan project, a masterful comjiendium of Jewish religious, moral, and scientific thought, delivered in the form of a frame tale and written in rhyming ¡irose interspersed with verse. Ihn Saluda comjileted Meshal Haqadmoni (= MH) ('The Fable ofthe .Ancient One') in the early 1280s, about the same time that Moshe de León was publishing the final installments ofhis Zohar. In fact, the two authors were known to be friends, and frequented the same circles in the Jewish communities of Castile. MH is divided into five sections, in which the moralizing author-character engages his interlocutor, referred to as "The Cynic", in extensive debates on Wisdom, Penitence, Sound Counsel. Humility, and Reverence. .As in other frame tales such as Calila e Digna. El Conde Lucanor, and ¡lediajis El Libro de Buen Amor, the two characters illustrate their arguments with traditional fables and tales. Faithful to the maqctma genre, Ihn Sahula's Hebrew is dense with biblical and exegetic allusion. The rhvming jirose (there is a rhyme apjiroximatelv even 6-12 syllables) limits the author's word choices, and forces irregularities in word order and grammatical form, which makes the Hebrew jirose that much more obscure. Puns and other wordjilav abound. .All this makes MH a sjiecial challenge for the translator, but jierhajis no more so than other late twelfth- or tliirteenth-ccntuiy Hebrew maquinal such asJudah al-Harlzl's Tahkemoul, Josej)h Hin Zabara's Sefer Sha'ashû'Tm. orjudali ibn Shabbetai's Mtnhat Yehuda sondi ìianasìum. Ibn Sahula's work is of particular interest lo Hispanists lor a number of reasons. First, it ajijieared alter Allònso's translation of the .Arabic KaIila waDinina , and somewhat before Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor. As such, ir belongs lo the medieval Iberian frame tale tradition, and its study, along with that ofthe other Hebrew maquinal mentioned above, is essential to that ol frame tale literature in Castilian. Second, students of the Conde Lucanor will be jiarticularlv intrigued to find that chajiter 5 ofMH contains a ston of an Egyptian sorcerer and his insincere discijile (2: 452-89) that is a striking jiarallel of the exemplo of Don Allan (no. 1 1). Finally, in a section of his introduction titled "The Spanish Historical Context" (lxx-lxxxv), Loewe claims that a number of the fables included in the book can be read as La corónica 34.1 (Fall, 2005): 280-83 Reviews281 allegories for contemporary Castilian politics. While these obsenations seem on the whole rather arbitrary, he substantiates them by frequently citing Joseph O'Callaghan's study on Alfonso X, The Learned King. One might also bear in mind that the socio-historical approach O'Callaghan took in Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa Maria may well have piqued Loewe's interest in studying the reflection of contemporary political events in MH, and perhaps influenced his methodology. To Loewe's credit, he admits that his speculations "are probably of little significance", but are included in hopes of prompting "specialists in medieval Spanish history to re-examine the whole text, in order to correct or refine [hisj findings" (lxxxvii). In any event, in this section he initiates a dialogue very much worthy of further scholarly attention, that of the position of Hebrew literature within larger Christian society. Historians working on medieval Spain, and in particular the history of Spain's Jewish communities, would do well to fulfill Loewe's hopes. On the whole, Loewe's work is one ofimpressive erudition and exhaustive scholarship. His command of medieval Hebrew language and literature is unquestionable, and is complemented bv his knowledge ofArabic, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin, all of which he brings to bear in the very comprehensive notes, appendices on relevant scientific topics, critical apparatus, and bibliography. Especially useful is the extended prose synopsis...