Wout van Bekkum, Groningen

In 2007 I published an edition of the Dīwān of the Baghdadi poet and paytan, El‘azar ha-Bavli, on the basis of two larger manuscripts. The first of these, containing 67 folios, is in New York and catalogued as EN Adler No. 881 and was edited by Hayyim Brody in 1935. The second, with 51 leaves, is in St. Petersburg and is catalogued as Firkovicz Heb, IIA, 210.1, This manuscript was used by Jacob Mann in his renowned Texts and Studies, Volume One, in 1931. The latter is the better example of the two, but the two of them supplement each other, offering us a fair idea of El‘azar’s productivity. Their study is important for our reconstruction of Jewish poetry in the East, especially in Baghdad during the first half of the thirteenth century, shortly before the invasion of the Mongols in 1258.
Continue reading The Religious Poetry of El‘azar ha-Bavli Baghdad, 13th Century







