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A Visiting Researcher to Cambridge has found previously unknown evidence of the legendary Jewish philosopher writing in a Romance dialect in manuscript fragments dating from the 12th century.
A scrap of 900-year-old paper – part of Cambridge’s Cairo Genizah collection of more than 200,000 fragments of writing chronicling life over 1,000 years in Egypt and the Middle East – has been identified as containing the handwriting of the legendary Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides.
The pages are a glossary of basic terms relating to herbs, basic foods and colours and were identified by José Martínez Delgado, a visiting professor to Cambridge University Library’s Genizah Research Unit, from the Department of Semitic Studies at the University of Granada.
Around 60 fragments written by Maimonides have been found in the Cairo Genizah manuscripts, and most are written in Maimonides’ customary Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic language written with the Hebrew alphabet). His writings include letters, legal rulings, and early drafts of his important works.
What makes this fragment unique, however, is the fact that Maimonides has added the translation in a Romance dialect below some words. It is the first evidence for Maimonides knowing Romance, an evolving dialect version of Latin that is a pre-cursor to what would eventually become modern-day Spanish dialects and language.
The discovery has been covered widely in the Spanish press this week.
Maimonides was born in Cordoba in 1135. His codification of Jewish law (the Mishneh Torah) is still considered a cornerstone of Jewish law and ethics. Through such works, Maimonides attempts to show that every part of Jewish law serves a rational purpose and that nothing was demanded for the sake of obedience alone.
A fragment from the Mishneh Torah, also in Maimonides' hand, part of the Cambridge Genizah archive.
A fragment from the Mishneh Torah, also in Maimonides' hand.
He influenced thinkers as diverse as Newton and Aquinas and set forth the philosophic foundations of Jewish belief and wider philosophy in works such as the Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides also served as Head of the Jews in Egypt and was renowned for his medical and scientific knowledge. In addition to being one of the Jewish faith’s most important thinkers and philosophers, Maimonides was also physician to the court of the Muslim sultan Saladin.
Maimonides must have written these fragments – later deposited in the Cairo Genizah from where Cambridge’s collection derives – sometime between 1168 when he arrived in Egypt and 1204, the year of his death.
