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Judah al-Ḥarizi, (Taḥkemoni, or The Tales of Heman the Ezraḥite). Edited, with an Introduction, Commentary, and Indexes by Joseph Yahalom and Naoya Katsumata. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of the Jewish Communities in the East, 2010. 687+lv pages. Multiple indexes.

Judah al-Ḥarizi (1165–1225) is one of those littérateurs who, having been raised in the Judeo-Arabic culture, sought to share it with their co-religionists after they arrived in the Midi. In the early years of the thirteenth century he translated a number of works from Arabic into Hebrew, adopting a method and ideology of translation very different from those of the Tibbonids (al-Ḥarizi and Samuel Ibn Tibbon clashed over the right method for translating The Guide for the Perplexed). Whereas the Tibbonids were interested in scholarly disciplines only (philosophy, grammar, sciences), al-Ḥarizi was also a gifted poet. He translated not only nonfiction, but also literature, notably the maqāmahs of al-Ḥariri (Maḥbarot Ittiʿel). In this double interest—poetic and theoretical—he resembles his much less productive and lesser known contemporary, Jacob ben Eleazar. [End Page 139]

This impressive and beautifully produced volume is devoted to al-Ḥarizi’s own poetic magnum opus, the Taḥkemoni, of which it offers the first scientific edition. Taḥkemoni recounts the half-real and half-imaginary events experienced by its hero-narrator during his travels, mainly in the Orient. As a reader, I immensely enjoyed the aesthetics of the poem; as a historian I was attentive to historical or philosophical accounts and descriptions of real life offered by al-Ḥarizi.

For example, an important topos for al-Ḥarizi is the human soul. His view of its origin and ultimate destiny turn out to be Neoplatonic, mostly drawn from Keter malḵut of Ibn Gabirol (whom al-Ḥarizi much admired). Al-Ḥarizi gives several accounts of the history of Hebrew poetry; in one of them he draws on climatological theory to explain why both Spain and Babylon were centers of Hebrew learning: both are under “the middle of the sky,” the first in the west and the second in the east (12:54–64, p. 209). His description of the Arab astrologer at the city gate (who also practices geomancy), his instruments, and his exchanges with his clients are lively and compelling (pp. 327–332). Jews interrogate the astrologer concerning the time of the Redemption; this inquiry is interpreted as involving the downfall of existing kingdoms and demise of kings, and hence as seditious, indeed revolutionary (24:120–122; p. 331), and they barely escape with their lives. Also instructive is the depiction of the physician as a charlatan and cheat (43, pp. 485–489). Notable too is the short poem al-Ḥarizi wrote to celebrate the arrival of Maimonides’ Book of Knowledge in Spain in the closing years of the twelfth century, in which he compares the book to a “tree planted on springs of knowledge” in which “each and every one will find what he searches” (p. 570).