Lot 17

Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi, Halakhic Code on Baba Mesi'a and Baba Bathra, in Hebrew, manuscript on vellum

Estimate

6,000 - 8,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

13 leaves, 285mm. by 219mm., wanting leaves at the beginning and end, apparently contiguous, written space 204mm. by 165mm., single column, 25 lines in black ink in an Oriental square hand, some staining and damage and occasional loss to the edges of the leaves throughout (only the first 3 leaves with minor loss of text to outer and upper edges of text block), in dark brown cloth binding over pasteboards with Sassoon label and bookplate inside front board

Provenance

provenance

David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942), his MS.1136 (Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, London (1932), vol.II, p. 1081); and his sale in our London rooms, 21 June 1994, lot 12.

Catalogue Note

text

Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi (1013-1103; known as 'Rif' from the initials of 'Rabbi Isaac Fasi') was the most influential Jewish legal thinker of his age, and the present manuscript is a substantial and early fragment of his greatest text, the Sefer Ha-halachot, a comprehensive work which attempts to clarify the Halakha from Talmudic sources.

Alfasi was born in a village near the suburbs of Fes in Morocco, and studied in the intellectual and literary centre of Kairouan, Tunisia, under the foremost rabbinical authorities of his age: Nissim Ben Jacob and Chananel Ben Chushiel. During these studies he conceived of the idea of this vast and comprehensive composition, and worked on it for ten years in his father-in-law's attic, and after the persecution of the Tunisian Jews in 1045, within the relative safety of Fes for a further forty years. The text was the first fundamental work in halakhic literature, and his own digest of his work led to the great Codes of Maimonides, and also served as one of the 'Three Pillars of Halakha', as an authority underpinning both the Halakhic codes 'Arba'ah Turim' and the 'Shulkhan Arukh'. It was distributed widely prior to the times of Rashi and other commentaries, and had a profound impact. Maimonides (himself a pupil of Alfasi's student Rabbi Joseph ibn Migash) stated that the work "superseded all the geonic codes ... for it contains all the decisions and laws which we need in our day", and heralded Alfasi as "the great rabbi, our teacher Isaac, of blessed memory". The text was widely used and numerous copies of it survive, and in the late Middle Ages when the Talmud was banned in Italy, Alfasi's code was among the few exemptions, and so for the Italian community it remained the primary subject of legal study up to the nineteenth century.