RaMBa”M). Sepher HaMitzvoth [“The Book of Precepts.”]

MOSES BEN MAIMON (MAIMONIDES/.

Yemen

Late-14th century

Judeo-Arabic Manuscript written in a neat square Hebrew hand, on paper. Some marginalia.

An early text of this fundamental work , here, in the original Judeo-Arabic. Maimonides composed his Sepher HaMitzvoth in Judeo-Arabic, prior to his epic Rabbinic Code, the Mishneh Torah. Only later was it translated into Hebrew. A codicological and paleographical report prepared by Prof. Shlomo Zucker accompanies the lot, in which he details the similarities of the present manuscript with two others, dated 1383 and 1386. See Malachi Beit-Arié (Ed.) Paleographical Project of the Jewish National and University Library of the Hebrew University, Asufoth Kethavim Ivriyim Meyemei Habenayim, Vol. I, Kethav Mizrachi Vekethav Teimani (Jerusalem, 1988) nos. 126 and 128. Very few such early manuscripts of the Sepher Hamitzvoth in the original Judaeo-Arabic are extant.