Arabic book culture in the work of a Jerusalem Karaite: Abu¯ l-Faraj Ha¯ru¯n and his glossary of difficult biblical words

Miriam Goldstein*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Presentation and analysis of the Judeo-Arabic postface, or conclusion, composed in Jerusalem by the 11th-century Karaite grammarian Abu¯ l-Faraj Ha¯ru¯n b. al-Faraj for his "bestselling" biblical glossary, which is extant in at least forty manuscript copies. Ha¯ru¯n's postface is quite similar to a preface, and includes many of the elements traditional to authorly prefaces of the period. Yet even while employing literary topoi that were de rigueur in Arabic literature and in composition of the period, Ha¯ru¯n produced a highly personal postface that conveys his conception of his own literary production in addition to adding important information about his personal biography.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)345-373
Number of pages29
JournalZeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft
Volume164
Issue number2
StatePublished - 2014

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