Hebrew Manuscripts
Date range: 14th-19th centuries
Medium: Manuscript
There are about 400 codices, Torah scrolls and marriage contracts on paper and parchment and two fragments on papyrus. Hebrew MSS 1-34 were purchased by Enriqueta Rylands in 1901 with the Crawford collection. Fifteen further manuscripts were acquired between 1909 and 1952.
The Crawford manuscripts include:
- A lavishly illuminated early 14th-century Sephardi Haggadah (Hebrew MS 6);
- A text of Nachmanides' Commentary on the Pentateuch, containing illuminations by the Florentine artist Francesco Antonio del Cherico (Hebrew MS 8);
- A collection of 19th-century benedictions from Honan (Hebrew MS 24);
- A 14th-century text of the 'Ammude ha-Golah of Isaac ben Joseph of Corbeil (Hebrew MS 31);
- The earliest known Italian illuminated Megillah, 1618 (Hebrew MS 22), among the Scrolls of Esther.
Most of the remaining manuscripts were acquired in 1954 when the Library bought the collection of Dr Moses Gaster. The collection includes prayer-books of many Jewish communities, apocryphal writings, commentaries, treatises, letters, marriage contracts, piyyûtîm, and thirteen scrolls of the Law. Among countries represented are Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Romania, Italy, Morocco, and, particularly, Yemen.
In addition there are almost 10,600 fragments in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic from the Genizah of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra in Old Cairo, purchased from Dr Moses Gaster in 1954.
See also:
Further information:
- Cataloguing in progress.
- Alexander Samely, 'The Interpreted Text: Among the Hebrew Manuscripts of the John Rylands University Library', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 73, no. 2 (1991), pp. 1-20.
- Katrin Kogman-Appel, ‘The picture cycles of the Rylands Haggadah and the so-called Brother Haggadah and their relation to the western tradition of Old Testament illustration’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 79, no. 1 (1997), pp. 3–19.
- Marc Michael Epstein, The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative and Religious Imagination (New Haven and London, 2011).
Alternative formats:
Digital facsimiles and descriptions of selected manuscripts are available via University of Pennsylvania Libraries OPENN.
Location:
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