RaMBa”M). MISHNEH TORAH

SCRIBES AND COLOPHONS: Khalaf ben Daoud(=Chjalfon Ben David) al-Tawili in1509 (1820 le-shtarot) in the town of Tawil (f. 105b).He states, “G-d should forgive me for my mistakes.” Folio 184r contains a short colophon with thedateTuesday, 19 Elul. 1491 (1802 le-shtarot) , at the top there is a faint colophpn with the name of another scribe from Tawil.. The lengthy colophon on f. 184r states that the ms. was copied in the Town Of Suda (Al sud) in Yemen in 1491 for Yeter ha-Levi ben Kokhav. This interesting colophon includes the genealogy of the owner for 23 generations back to the patriarch Jacob! (Many Yemenite families traced their lineage back to the patriarchs. However, in order to protect those who could not trace their descent that far back from being consideed second class citizens, the Yemenite Rabbis in the 19th century ordered all such lineage documents destroyed. This is one of the few remaining genealogical documents which escaped this decree.) TEXT: SEFER NEZIKIN (TORTS) -ff. 1-105. f.1 starts in the middle of Chapter 2, halacha 1. f. .3 starts from chapter 5, halacha 3. This section was written in1509. SEFER KINYAN (ACQUISITIONS) - ff.106b-183. Some text is missing especially towads the end of the book.This section is in asimilar but diffrent hand written approximately the same time ( ca. 1500). Some folios are inserted from later ms. to complete missing text in the original ms. SEFER MISHPATIM (CIVIL LAWS) AND SEFER SHOFTIM (JUDGES) - ff. 184-329. Most of this section is written in a similar hand as the previous sections, with missing text provided from an apparrently even earlier ms.(according to Dr. B. Richler perhaps even from the 14th century!) A few folios are supplied from other manusripts, some from the 20th century. This MS belonged to the late Rabbi Yihya Kapach. As is well known, Yemenite scholars regarded their Maimonides manuscripts to have the most accurate readings. This ms in many cases has a fuller text and contains variances from the standard published editions. With thanks to Dr. Binyamin Richler, Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, Jerusalem, for his scholarship in researching this manuscript