TIKKUN YISSAKHAR (LITURGICAL-CALENDARIC TREATISE), RABBI ISSACHAR IBN SUSAN, CONSTANTINOPLE: [SOLOMON BEN ISAAC JABEZ], 1564

The rare, unauthorized first edition of an important calendaric work.

Rabbi Issachar Ibn Susan (ca. 1510-after 1580), scion of a prominent Moroccan family, immigrated circa 1527 from Fez to Jerusalem, where he studied with Rabbi Levi Ibn Habib (ca. 1483-1545). Later, he relocated to Safed and there became affiliated with both the Maghrebi (North African) and Mustarabian/Morisco (native Middle Eastern) communities. Interested in the Jewish calendar and the various synagogue customs of communities in the Holy Land and the Diaspora, he completed a first draft of the present book about 5299 (1538-1539), with calendaric information extending until the year 6000 (2239-2240), “the end of the world.” In it, he made extensive use of Sefer abudarham (see lots 56, 210) but also included valuable information about local rites, some of which is known from no other source.

As discussed in Ibn Susan’s introduction to the second edition (Venice, 1578), the treatise was copied in two or three locales prior to being printed and was published without his knowledge by Solomon ben Benjamin Ibn Rey under the present title. Ibn Susan goes on to note that Ibn Rey did not incorporate a number of edits, skipped parts of the text, and added some of his (Ibn Rey’s) own calendaric material which, he observes, was full of mistakes. Still, the work was well received, especially among communities in Yemen and India, and even influenced Rabbi Joseph Caro while he was compiling his Shulhan arukh (see lot 37). The volume closes with the text of the first chapter of Tractate Derekh erets zuta, which the Mustarabian community in Safed had the custom of studying on the seventh Sabbath between Passover and Shavuot.