Ketzat Hannah Almarhumah [Story of Hannah and Her Seven Sons]. * Ketzat Yosef ha-Tzadik [Story of Joseph]

(INDIA)

Calcutta

1863

Judeo-Arabic manuscript in Indian Baghdadi cursive hand. Colophon reads: “”Ha-Tza’ir Yeshayah Ya’akov Aharon. Katavti otho poh Ir Calcutta yom R”CH Elul 5623 ve-nishlamti yom R”CH Cheshvan 5624” [The youth Isaiah Jacob Aaron. I wrote it here in the city of Calcutta on the New Moon of Elul 1863 and completed it on the New Moon of Cheshvan 1864]

The Story of Joseph enjoyed great popularity throughout the Arabic-speaking Jewish world. David Sassoon points out that the Maghrebi or North African versions differ considerably from the Baghdadi and Indian versions. The Sassoon collection held two Indian manuscripts, one from Poona, 1863. Ketzat Yosef ha-Tzadik was published in Bombay in 1887. Sassoon also possessed three eighteenth-century Indian manuscripts of Ketzat Hannah Al Marhumah [The Story of Hannah and Her Seven Sons]. The latter was first published in Calcutta in 1888 See Ohel Dawid: Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, Vol. I (1932), pp.479-481