[Review:] Shimon Yakerson. Ozar Sepharad — Sefardskaia sokrovishchnitsa. Sefardskaia kniga X–XV vv. Ot rukopisnoi k pechatnoi traditsii. [Ozar Sepharad: Sephardic treasury. Sephardic Books from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century. From Manuscripts to Printed Books] — St. Petersburg: Filologicheskii fakul’tet SPb. gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2015. — 127 pp., by Mikhail Kizilov // Written Monuments of the Orient. 1(3), 2016. P. 111–112.
Written by the well-known specialist in Hebrew paleography and codicology, the
book represents at the same time a serious academic study, manual of Sephardic
Hebrew paleography, and short paleographic chrestomathy. The book starts with the
survey of the history of Sephardic Jewry from the time of Visigothic Spain (the fifth
century A.D.) and until the expulsion of 1496 (pp. 11–17). This survey serves as the
introduction to the analysis of the Sephardic manuscript and printed book from the
10th to the 15th cc. (pp. 18–22). Yakerson calls the whole manuscript heritage of
Sephardic Jews by the Hebrew term moreshet Sepharad (“Sephardic heritage”) and
estimates that Sephardic manuscripts constitute about 22% of all medieval Jewish
manuscripts; 35% of all medieval Jewish manuscripts were written with Sephardic
handwriting. This is the largest group of all dated Jewish manuscripts registered in
Sfar-Data database (p. 22)...
On November 14–15, 2023, the 1st All-Russia conference of young orientalists “Army and military traditions of the Near East” will be held at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, RAS. The program of the conference is now available.
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