S. M. Stern’s contribution to the study of the literary career of Judah al-Ḥarizi

ABSTRACT

Alongside his career as a scholar of Arabic and Islam, S.M. Stern contributed many important studies to the Hebrew literature of the medieval Arabic realm, most of them grounded in manuscript research, especially in the geniza. He returned repeatedly to al-Ḥarizi, publishing newly discovered poems and maqāmāt by this author in Hebrew and in Arabic, including two maqāmāt on al-Ḥarizi’s travels, one in Hebrew and large portions of one in Arabic. He also recognized in an Arabic maqāmā quoted by Ibn Bassam the source of the story of the rooster in al-Ḥarizi’s Hebrew maqāmā collection known as the Tahkemoni, and to this discovery he devoted particularly stimulating analysis.

KEYWORDS:

• Arabic
• Islamic
• medieval
• Hebrew

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sela, “The Interaction of Judaic and Islamic Studies.”

2 Stern’s major works on the subject are collected in Harvey, Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry. [For Stern’s work in this area, see Alan Jones’s contribution to the present volume.]

3 Stern, “Letoledot rabi shemu’eil hanagid.”

4 Stern, “Arabic Poems.”

5 Stern, “Ibn Hasdai’s Neoplatonist.”

6 Stern, “Ḥalifat mikhtavim.”

7 Stern, “A Twelfth-Century Circle.”

8 Stern, “An Unpublished Maqāma.”

9 Published by Joseph Yahalom and Naoya Katsumata: see al-Ḥarizi, Taḥkemoni.

10 Stern, “Teiʾur ḥadash meirabi yehuda al-Ḥarizi”; Stern, “Rabi yehuda Halevi.”

11 Sadan, “Rabi yehuda al-Ḥarizi.”

12 Stern, “Some Unpublished Poems.”

13 al-Ḥarizi Kitab al-durar, 52–89.

14 Stern, “Meqorah haʿaravi.”

15 Stern, “Letoledot shemu’eil hanagid.”

16 Stern, “An Unpublished Maqāma,” 200–201.

 

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Raymond P. Scheindlin

Raymond P. Scheindlin is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. His research has mostly concerned the impact of Arabic culture on the literary Golden Age of Hebrew culture in tenth to twelfth century al-Andalus. He is the author of numerous studies, translations and books on the subject, the latest being Vulture in a Cage: Poems by Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Archipelago, 2016), an extensive collection of Ibn Gabirol's poems in verse translation. See www.raymondscheindlin.com.