ISAAC BEN JACOB ALFASI: COMMENTARY

MS 1860
MS Short Title ISAAC BEN JACOB ALFASI: COMMENTARY 
Text ISAAC BEN JACOB ALFASI: COMMENTARY ON THE TALMUD, CH. 331-335, HILKHOT RAV ALFAS 
Description MS in Hebrew on paper, Palestine or Iraq, 12th c., 6 ff., 17x13 cm, single column (12x9 cm), 16 lines in an oriental semi-cursive Hebrew book script. 
Binding England, 1921-1942, brown cloth.
Provenance 1. The Cairo Genizah, Fustât, Egypt (-ca. 1896); 2. David Solomon Sassoon's Library, Hertfordshire, MS.525 (1921-1942); 3. David Solomon Sassoon's trustees (1942-1994); 4. Sotheby's 21.6.1994:4 (5th Sassoon sale).
Commentary This is almost certainly the oldest extant MS of the great commentary on the Talmud by Isaac Ben Jacob Alfasi (1013-1103), the most important Rabbinic codifier before Maimonides, and almost contemporary with the author. Second to the caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the great Genizah in Cairo is the most significant and evocative source for any fragments of early Hebrew MSS. The Genizah was fully unearthed from 1896. Probably no Egyptian finds, except that of Tutankhamon in 1922, has ever excited the public imagination so much at the time of the discovery. No single source has added so much to our knowledge of early Jewish culture. For half a century these were among the oldest Hebrew MSS known.
Published D.S. Sassoon: Ohel Dawid, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, London 1932, I, pp. 155-6.
Exhibited XVI Congress of the International Organization for the study of the Old Testament. Faculty of Law Library, University of Oslo, 29 July - 7 August 1998.
Place of origin Palestine
Dates 12c AD