Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos. Sección Hebreo

The The Hebrew Laments (Qinot) of Judah ben David Ibn Yaḥya (MS Firkovicz Evr. I.165)

W J van Bekkum — 2025-04-21

This edition of Hebrew laments (qinot) by Judah ben David Ibn Yaḥya is based on MS Firkovicz Evr. I.165, a valuable source for becoming acquainted with unknown compositions that do not bear the hallmarks of later adaptations and alternations. Judah ben David Ibn Yaḥya (ca. 1365 – ca. 1420) was one of the many prominent descendants of the renowned Ibn Yaḥya / Ya‘īsh families who were active and productive in Spain, Portugal, and the Ottoman Empire. His qinot occasionally mention the incidents that occurred during the summer of 1391 in detail. There are also allusions to the growing intolerance towards Iberian Jewry as a result of forced disputations and mass conversions during the 15th century. As an elegist, Judah Ibn Yaḥya almost exclusively survived in this manuscript, combining conventional characteristics of the qinah genre with a unique personal style.

The Torah scroll of the General Historical Library of the University of Salamanca (Ms. 2777)

Óscar Lilao Franca — 2025-07-03

The Historical Library of the University of Salamanca keeps a Torah scroll (Ms. 2777). It has recently been digitized and a brief preliminary description is provided here.

The various hands in the Spanish texts of the Hebrew Nation in Pisa

Cristóbal José Álvarez López — 2025-07-21

Catalogued as 0457, a volume of Atti Civili from the Kahal Kadosh (Hebrew for ‘holy community’) is preserved in the Historical Archive of the Jewish Community of Pisa (Italy). This manuscript consists of 1,079 handwritten folios in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Hebrew. It is a volume of miscellaneous documents that contains 79 case files dated between 1660 and 1691, documenting the customs, practices, and legal disputes of this community. This study focuses on the texts written in Spanish, aiming to analyse how the personal style of different scribes influenced the discursive traditions. Over the three decades covered in this volume of miscellaneous, various chancellors and vice-chancellors succeeded one another in the community, allowing for an examination of the linguistic imprint left by the different scribes who contributed to the manuscript.