The Book of Tradition/Sefer Ha-Qabbalah

Fülszöveg

SEFER HA-QABBALAH The Book of Tradition BY ABRAHAM IBN DAUD edited by GERSON D. COHEN : : The glorious history of the Jews of Andalusian Spain came to an abrupt end in 1147-48 with the Almohade invasion and upheaval. Many old and renowned Jewish communities, among them Cordova, Granada, Seville and Lucena, were wiped out. Thousands of Jews fled to the north where they found a new home in Christian Spain and sought to revive the rich communal life they and their ancestors had enjoyed for centuries. Writing in Toledo somé thirteen years after the calamity,_Abraham ibn Daud wrote his historical epitaph'to the golden age that had produced such courtiers, rabbis and poets as Hisdai ibn Sharput, Sámuel the Nagid, Isaac al-Fasi, Judah ha-Levi. : : While Ibn Daud has gained distinction as the first Jewish Aristotelian on the Ibérián peninsula, he is no less famous as the first chronicler of Andalusian Jewry. Part of a historical trilogy, Sefer ha-Qabbalah (The Book of Tradition) is formally... Tovább

Fülszöveg

SEFER HA-QABBALAH The Book of Tradition BY ABRAHAM IBN DAUD edited by GERSON D. COHEN : : The glorious history of the Jews of Andalusian Spain came to an abrupt end in 1147-48 with the Almohade invasion and upheaval. Many old and renowned Jewish communities, among them Cordova, Granada, Seville and Lucena, were wiped out. Thousands of Jews fled to the north where they found a new home in Christian Spain and sought to revive the rich communal life they and their ancestors had enjoyed for centuries. Writing in Toledo somé thirteen years after the calamity,_Abraham ibn Daud wrote his historical epitaph'to the golden age that had produced such courtiers, rabbis and poets as Hisdai ibn Sharput, Sámuel the Nagid, Isaac al-Fasi, Judah ha-Levi. : : While Ibn Daud has gained distinction as the first Jewish Aristotelian on the Ibérián peninsula, he is no less famous as the first chronicler of Andalusian Jewry. Part of a historical trilogy, Sefer ha-Qabbalah (The Book of Tradition) is formally structured as a history of the Jews and Judaism from ancient times down to 1161. Writing in an age of deep communal anguish, Ibn Daud lent his support to the efforts to revive the historic community of Spain by attempting to prove that the only legitimate form of Jewish life and the only rightful spokesman of that tradition were rabbinism and the rabbinic leadership. The avowed stimulus for this motivation was the threat posed by the small sectarian Jewish community of Karaites, who had long since found a home in Christian Spain and had succeeded in gaining considerable influence there. Ibn Daud's work is thus a basic introduction to the way of life, tensions and achievements of the rabbinic civilization that flowered under the protection and stimulus of Arabic domination. : : The present edition of this historical classic provides a new critical text of the originál along with translation, commentary and analysis. Vissza