The Jewish scholar Maimonides is one of the most famous theologians, jurists and philosophers of the Middle Ages. Now researchers have discovered previously unknown handwritten text fragments by this scholar in a collection of historical documents from Egypt and the Middle East. In them, Maimonides did not write down the Arabic language with Hebrew characters, as is usual, but wrote down the words in part in a Romance dialect, which is a precursor of today’s Spanish.
Moses Maimonides was born in 1135 to a Jewish rabbi in Cordoba, Spain, which was then under Moorish rule. Shortly afterwards, after the pressure on Jewish residents to convert to Islam grew, Maimonides’ family fled to the Middle East. There Maimonides received a solid education in Jewish theology, law, philosophy and medicine from Jewish and Arab teachers. From 1165 Maimonides lived and worked as a scholar and doctor in Cairo and wrote numerous scientific and religious-theoretical writings. These laid the foundations of Jewish philosophy and also influenced scholars such as Isaac Newton and Thomas Aquinas.
Historical eyewitnesses from the Cairo Geniza
Now scientists have discovered the fragment of a previously unknown handwritten text by Maimonides. The piece of paper, more than 800 years old, was part of the Cairo Genizah collection. This includes more than 200,000 text fragments written in Egypt and the Middle East between the 9th and 19th centuries. Because the name of God appeared on many of these predominantly Jewish manuscripts, these papers were considered too sacred at the time to simply be disposed of. That is why the Jewish community of Fustat – an old part of Cairo where Maimonides also lived – kept them in a so-called Geniza. This was a special storage room in the synagogue.
When this Geniza was rediscovered and opened in the late 19th century, it contained not only Bibles, prayer books and Jewish legal texts, but also thousands of manuscripts of very different origins and contents. The spectrum ranged from Arabic fables and Islamic philosophical treatises to medical texts, marriage contracts and shopping lists to a child’s scrawled alphabet exercises. Around 60 text fragments by Maimonides were also discovered among these manuscripts. The scholar had written most of them in Judeo-Arabic, in which he wrote down Arabic sentences and words with Hebrew characters.
Lists in Maimonides’ handwriting
While examining various manuscripts from the Cairo-Genizah collection, José Martínez Delgado from the University of Granada has now discovered some fragments that were written in the Romance dialect – an early form of Spanish that was still closely based on Latin. “But something about the handwriting in these fragments seemed familiar to me,” says Delgado. “Finally, it became clear to me why: I had seen this manuscript before.” Closer comparative analyzes showed that these text fragments must have been written by Maimonides. What was unusual, however, was that he used the Romance language in addition to Arabic sentences and words.
The texts written by Maimonides between 1168 and 1204 appear to have been part of a glossary or medical work, as Delgado noted. Because in it appear lists of foods, tastes and aromas, colors and actions. “The food ranges from staple foods such as bread and water to vegetables and edible seeds and fruits,” reports the researcher. “The actions listed begin with basic animal activities, such as sleeping and eating, and then move on to actions and feelings that are specific to humans.” The listing followed an internal logic rather than a formal one, as Delgado explains.
Why Maimonides listed these words is unclear. Delgado suspects that the scholar wrote them down as part of his medical research and teaching. “He was a doctor and teacher, so he could have written them down for his students or for himself as a kind of vocabulary list,” the scientist suspects. It is fitting that some words are written in both Arabic and Romansh.
Source: University of Cambridge