[Ḥesed le-Avraham. Berekhat Avraham / me-et Avraham ben Mordekhai Azulai]. [חסד לאברהם. בריכת אברהם / מאת אברהם בן מרדכי אזולאי].
Details
Type of record: Archive
Title: [Ḥesed le-Avraham. Berekhat Avraham / me-et Avraham ben Mordekhai Azulai]. [חסד לאברהם. בריכת אברהם / מאת אברהם בן מרדכי אזולאי].
Classmark: MS ROTH/407
Date(s): [17th century]
Language: Hebrew
Size and medium: 308 leaves : paper, illustrations
Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/115653
Description
Hebrew title supplied from headings on folios 1r and 217r, and by cataloguer. English title follows Roth, “Catalogue”, in Alexander Marx: Jubilee Volume, vol. 1 (New York, 1950), no. 407.
Alternative titles:
Nahare naḥalah shevaʻ ʻenayim. נהרי נחלה שבע עינים.
Tomer Devorah. תומר דבורה.
Berikhat Avraham
Contents:
1. folio 1r–216v[=217v]: ''ספר חסד לאברהם''.
1a. folio 1r–5v: ''הצעת המחבר לס''ד''.
2. folio 217r[=218r]–213v[=237v]: ״בריכת אברהם אשר בה נבאר נהרי נחלה שבעה עינים״.
3. folio 214r[=238r]–253v[=267v]: מפתחות הספר אבן השתיה״” (= index for both treaties; not part of 1685 print editions).
The above quoted heading on folio [218r] has erroneously שעבה instead of שבעה but above the inverted letters are marks which signify the correction of this mistake.
State of text:
Worn, but fairly well-preserved, and conserved in December 1997.
Origin and transmission of text:
'Berikhat Avraham' is a condensation of 'Tomer Devorah' by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero 1522-1570.
Roth's description of MS Roth 407 states that the manuscript has “considerable differences from printed version.” Unfortunately, Roth does not specify which printed text of ‘Sefer Ḥesed le-Avraham’ he used for his comparison (there is no printed edition of the work in Roth's collection as it is today).
Ḥesed le-Avraham was printed, for the first time, in two very different editions in Sulzbach and in Amsterdam in 1685 nearly simultaneously.The Sulzbach print neither contains 'Berikhat Avraham' nor an index which makes it very different from MS Roth 407 by default. The Amsterdam edition contains 'Berikhat Avraham' but also no index. Its textual version is known to be rather corrupt, and different from many extant manuscripts. From after 1685 until the 1990s, all known printed editions of Ḥesed le-Avraham were based, more or less, on the Amsterdam edition. It seems likely that Roth used the Amsterdam print or one of its successors to compare his manuscript to it.
Bibliographical note:
Roth, “Catalogue”, in Alexander Marx: Jubilee Volume, vol. 1 (New York, 1950), no. 407.
National Library of Israel (NLI), Online Catalogue, system-no. 000185912.
The NLI’s description is based on the microfilm of MS Roth 407 made on behalf of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the NLI during the 1960s.
The microfilm can now be downloaded in a digitised form from the NLI-webpage.
Davis, Handlist 164 (Leeds, 2005), no. 407.
See also:
Dov Zlotnick, "Love of 'the Good, the Pleasant and the Beneficial' in the Writings of R. Israel Najara and R. Abraham Azulai", Tarbits 44 (1975): 183–183, esp. note 1-4.
Isaiah Tishby, "The Attitude of R. Abraham Azulay Towards Cordoverian and Lurianic Kabbalah [Heb.]", Sefunot 17 (1980): 199 (also in his, Ḥiḳre Ḳabalah u-Shluḥoteha: Meḥḳarim u-Meḳorot (Jerusalem 1982).
Decoration
1: Ilan ha-Sefirot אילן הספירות (Tree of divine emanations) (folio 254r[=268r]).
2: Small geometrical figure (61r) and small table (140r) to illustrate the discussion within the text.
3: Titles and initial words in big very decorative semi-cursive script.
4: Decorative markings of specific words like quire catchwords.
5: Free rectangular spaces within the text (see especially folio 29–33 and 181r). These were doubtless meant to contain illustrations like those to be found, e.g., in the Amsterdam print of 1685. Some of the relatively early preserved manuscripts of Ḥesed le-Avraham have empty spaces similar to those in MS Roth 407 (see, e.g., National Library of Israel Ms. Heb. 8°1567).
Physical characteristics
Dimensions of written space: 158 x 95 mm.
Dimensions of binding: 223 x 160 mm.
Foliation: i (handmade paper) + x (blank; i–ii is an unopened folded double leaf) + 268 (foliated as 1–194, 194a, 195[=196]–223[=224], 201[=225]–223[=247], 234[=248]–254[=268]) + xxx (blank; i–iv, v–viii, ix–xii, xiii–xvi, xvii–xxi, xxii–xxiv are unopened folded quadruple leaves; xxv–xxvi, xxvii–xxviii, and ixxx–xxx are unopened folded double leaves) + iii (modern handmade paper, iii is pastedown); modern pencil foliation which also foliates the blank initial and final quires of the codex with Roman numerals; the peculiarity of the foliation is likely the result of the—failed—attempt to somehow reflect the misbinding of quire [33] (see below collation statement).
Collation: The sequence of the text is out of order at three places. Folio 56 is followed by two folios in reverse order (folio 56 is, at least according to the extant quire-catchwords, the last folio of quire [8]).
Catchwords: At the bottom of the left inner margin of nearly every folio verso; catchwords at the end of each quire are decorated with specific identical markings.
Ruling: No ruling is visible apart from a vertical line on the outer margin which may be made by dry point. The meticulous layout of every page of MS Roth 407 has the appearance of that of a carefully frame-ruled manuscript. This suggests that the scribe used a sheet of ruled lines placed behind the fairly transparent paper leaves as ruling device.
Script: Italian semi-cursive and cursive Hebrew script.
Ms. codex: width 160mm height 230mm
Binding
Rebound but former book boards covered in full blind-tooled leather are kept with item.
Text block and binding restored (December 1997): Cleaned and re-sewn. Laced onto Millboards. Hand-worked coloured headbands and handmade endpapers. Full-bound in Moroccan Goat. Blind-tooled lines drawn in geometrical patterns on both covers and compartments on spine as original. Original white labels remounted. Ms Roth shelf mark embossed in gold on upper spine.
Handwritten on upper original label: חסד לאברהם כ[תב] י[ד].
Roth’s description of MS Roth 407, cut out from a copy of his printed catalogue, is glued right below the upper edge of the right cover board versus.
This make-shift label was probably made and attached by Roth himself.
Scribal information
The text is written in one hand and its copyist was very likely a professional. The Tetragrammaton is substituted by ה with a specific marking throughout the text. The left-hand margin is maintained diligently. The scribe uses mainly elongated letters to fill out the end of the lines; at no place he writes the exceeding letters of a word in the margins.
Former owners and annotations
In first flyleaf recto in weak black ink: יוסף ירך .
Next to it, blotted out but still readable: שלי רפאל חיים רת
Below that in pencil and most likely in Roth's hand: "Owns? Joseph or Josef Hayim JARACH".
Sparsely annotated in Hebrew in black ink, likely by a second, later, hand. This hand uses the margins to comment on the text's content or correct errors. It also points out where the sequence of the text is out of order. There are marginal notes below the quire catchword on folio 56v and below the leaf catchword of 58v, as well as above the quire catchword on folio 203v[=204v] (''עיין לקמן בבריכת אברהם השקת כ"ז"), below the quire catchword on 204v[=228v] (''עיין לפניך אחר ד' דפים"), on the margin of folio 205r[=229r] (''כל ד' דפים אלו שייכים חמעלה בעין גדי נהר י''ז'') and next from the catchword (probably erroneously not marked as quire catchword) on folio 208v[=232]. The remarks regarding the sequence of the text were clearly made before its foliation in pencil. While following generally the tradition not to correct mistakes by crossing them out within the text, it seems that the same hand (?), did indeed
do so at least once (see 203r[=204r]).
Access and usage
Access
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