Tichlal. [Yemenite prayer book for entire year]. including the Passover Haggadah, with Judeo-Arabic translation and commentary

(LITURGY)

Yemen

(1618)

R. Yahia Bashiri, scribe, on vellum. Rashi script. Nikud Bavli (Babylonian system of vocalization whereby vowel points occur above words, rather than below, as in the accepted modern practice). Initial words outlined in red ink. Marginal notes in differing hands. 29 lines per page

Kafach, Agadeta DePischa (Jerusalem, 1959), p. 8

The authoritative Yemenite scholar, Yosef Kafach, made extensive use of this Tichlal in his Passover Haggadah, wherein he extensively described the manuscript. (Kafach translated the commentary to Hebrew but as an appendix [pp. 150-163] provided the Judeo-Arabic original.) In the manuscript, the Haggadah is to be found on ff. 21v-33v. The scribe R. Yahia Bashiri lived in the seventeenth-century in the town of Arlhaba, some twenty kilometers from the capital of San’a. He was a master scribe and in the course of his career produced several magnificent Tichlalim. Bashiri was also a prolific author. Writing under the nom de plume “Avner ben Ner ha-Sharoni,” he produced “Chavatzeleth HaSharon” on grammar; “HaLeket” on the Pentateuch; and “Even HaSharon” on the Talmudic legends of Eyn Yaakov. Kafach assumes that the commentary to the Haggadah did not originate with Bashiri, but was rather excerpted by him from an earlier commentary.The year of composition of our Tichlal is deduced from the earliest year of the several calendars on ff.129v.-130r