Liturgy for Passover, including the Sabbaths preceding and the Sabbaths of the seven following weeks, and the festive day known as Zimuth Pesach

(SAMARITAN)

Nablus (Shechem)

1738

Black, red, and green inks on coarse paper. Samaritan and a smattering of Arabic. Broad margins. Inscription f.2r. with the name of the scribe, “Jacob b. Isaac b. Murjan b. Ibrahim b. Ishmael b. Sedakah,” as well as the year 1151 a.h. or 1738 c.e.

RARE SAMARITAN PRAYER BOOK FOR PASSOVER. While numerically so small as to be insignificant, the Samaritans have played an enormously important part in history. For approximately 2,500 years they have resided in Shechem or Nablus on the slopes of Mount Grerizim, which they consider sacred. Until its destruction by the Romans in 484 c.e., a Samaritan Temple rested atop Mount Gerizim. In recent years, they have live wedged - religiously as well as geopolitically - between their Jewish and Arab neighbors. It is estimated that in 1738, when our manusc ript was written, there were no more than 200-300 Samaritans left. Many of the prayers in this collection are alphabetic acrostics by the fourth-century Samaritan writers Amrah Darrah and Markah, with some parts of the Book of Exodus. The scribe Jacob b. Isaac b. Murjan b. Ibrahim b. Ishmael b. Sedakah was a member of the renowned Danfi school of scribes. The scribe’s grandfather Murjan was both a masterful and prolific scribe. There are extant but two manuscripts by our scribe, the one being Bodleian ms. e 1, and the second, this liturgical manuscript, formerly of the Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts. In Ohel Dawid, Catalolgue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, London (1932), Vol. II, p. 597, no. 36, we find a manuscript entry of the uncle of our scribe, Muslim b. Marjan b. Ibrahim b. Isma’il b. Sadakah el-Danafi dated 1699. See A. Crown, Samaritan Scribes and Manuscripts (Tübingen, 2001), chap. 10; Crown, Pummer, Tal eds., A Companion to Samaritan studies (1993), p. 65, s.v. Danfi family; A.E. Cowley, The Samaritan Liturgy (1909); EJ, Vol. XIV, col. 754; JE, Vol. X, pp. 687-9. ** With thanks to Prof. Alan Crown of the University of Sydney, Australia, for clarifying several matters relating to the manuscript