Siddur (Prayerbook), [Persia, 13th century]

One of the oldest surviving Persian prayerbooks.

Like other Jewish communities, the Jews of Persia developed local variants of the traditional liturgy. The early Persian‑area liturgy is imperfectly documented. In the late medieval period, it broadly follows the one codified in the tenth century by Saadia Gaon, but by the late 18th–19th centuries many Iranian communities adopted the Sephardi liturgy, and the earlier form fell from regular use; relatively few witnesses survive, mostly from the sixteenth century onward.

This early Persian Jewish prayerbook fragment is therefore exceptionally rare. Consisting of thirteen leaves written in a thirteenth-century semi‑cursive regional hand, the text preserves portions of the morning service, with additional fragments from the evening prayers and the Purim liturgy. Judeo-Arabic directions provide liturgical cues and glosses, consistent with the bilingual literacy attested in medieval Persianate Jewish communities. Noteworthy is the appearance of a particular prayer in a version recommended by the great medieval scholar Moses Maimonides in his Seder Tefilot (2:35) and testified elsewhere primarily in the Yemenite liturgical tradition. Although fragmentary, the manuscript is an important witness to the liturgical traditions, scribal practice, and vernacular language of medieval Persian Jewry.

The leaves of this prayerbook were recovered from inside the binding of a twelfth or thirteenth century manuscript of the Midrash Tanhuma and were once part of the storied library of the scholar, philanthropist, and collector David Solomon Sassoon. To our knowledge, it is among the oldest copies of a Persian prayerbook to appear on the market.

Physical Description

Thirteen paper leaves; Oriental semi-cursive Hebrew in black ink, single column; Judeo-Arabic marginalia. Leaf 3 appears misbound and possibly in a different hand, suggesting later supplementation or collaborative copying. 

Binding: modern brown cloth, gilt-stamped number to spine; pastedown title label.

Provenance

Collection of David Solomon Sassoon (MS 660; discovered in the binding of his MS 597, a 12th- or 13th-century copy of the Midrash Tanhuma).

Literature

Elkan N. Adler, “The Persian Jews: Their Books and Their Ritual” The Jewish Quarterly Review 10:4 (1898), 584–625.

Daniel Goldschmidt, ed., Seder ha‑Tefillah shel ha‑Rambam (Jerusalem, 1958).

David Solomon Sassoon, Ohel Dawid: Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library (London, 1932), vol. II, 897.

Solomon Tal, Nusah ha-tefilah shel yehudei paras (Jerusalem, 1981).