Cordovero, Moses. Pardess Rimonim ["Orchard of Pomegranates:" Code of Cordoveran Kabbalah]

(KABBALAH).

San'a (Yemen)

1865

On f.28r. floral and bird design in red and brown watercolor. Broad margins. The inscription on the title gives the manuscript's date as "2,176" [le-minyan shetaroth] or 1865 c.e.

A most attractively penned manuscript. After the completion of the text of Pardess Rimonim, as an afterthought, there appears a page of mystical intentions, entitled "Kavanoth Koleloth" In a sense, RaMa"K (R. Moses Cordovero) [1522-1570] did for Kabbalah what Maimonides did for Halacha: He provided a systematic code. However upon Cordovero's death, his carefully constructed system of Kabbalah, would be left behind by the new revolutionary Lurianic Kabbalah of his younger contemporary in Safed, AR"I (R. Isaac Luria). See G. Scholem, Kabbalah (1974), pp. 401-404