National Library of Israel, Ms. Heb. 577.2/61
Sebastiano Crestani, Friederike S. Schmidt
A manuscript written in Judeo-Arabic sheds light on Jewish messianic and eschatological expectations in the late Middle Ages and connects them to the phenomenon of the Crusades. This manuscript, although fragmentary, must be understood within a body of messianic and eschatological literary texts that flourished from the 7th century onwards and reached one of its peaks between the 12th and the 13th centuries, i.e. during the period of the Crusades.
In the messianic schema elaborated from late antiquity onwards, the redemption of Israel will occur after a time of struggle, persecution and battles between the nations of the world. The Crusades that departed from Europe to fight against the Muslims in the Near East (11th – 13th centuries CE) were accompanied by such events: the Jews had to face persecutions in Europe, especially in present-day Germany, and see clashes between Muslims and Christians in their Promised Land. A particular exegesis of Obadiah 1:21 (“Saviours shall go up to Mount Zion to rule the mount of Esau”) interpreted the Christian conquest of Jerusalem as one of the signs of the approach of the eschaton: Zion will have to fall into the hands of the descendants of Esau, i.e., the Romans/the Christians,2 and then will be rescued by the troops of the messiah.3 Eschatological and messianic expectations were conveyed by texts composed and constantly reshaped throughout late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Most of them have come down to us in Hebrew, preserved in late medieval codices and even printed editions, but some traces of the circulation of this literary production can be found in the Cairo Genizah too. Ms. Heb. 577.2/6 held at the National Library of Israel is one of such examples.
This Judeo-Arabic fragment consists of a single folio (recto-verso), with 17 and 19 lines respectively. The script is oriental and the material is paper. The date of composition is unknown.4 Despite its poor physical conditions, especially in the upper part, the text it preserves can be easily connected to the corpus of Jewish eschatological and apocalyptic literature that flourished in the period of the Crusades, as it relates that the coming of the messiah is bound to a time of battles between Arabs, Byzantines and Franks (the term habitually used to refer to the crusaders).
The most relevant eschatological elements occurring in our fragment are 1. the messiah; 2. the battle on the Euphrates; 3. the dominion of an evil king (including the persecution of the Jews); 4. the battle in the plain of Acre.
Uri Zvi Shachar5 has – in our view – correctly connected this fragment to a series of apocalyptic-eschatological texts that form the so-called “Šimʿon b. Yoḥai Complex”,6 a group of writings composed of closely interrelated texts. Arguably, the most ancient of these is Secrets (נסתרות) of R. Šimʿon b. Yoḥaii, an apocalypse whose core was presumably written in the 8th century CE, describing a vision purportedly experienced by the famous tanna Šimʿon b. Yoḥai (3rd century CE). His vision is mediated by the archangel Meṭaṭron and encompasses future events that will lead to the redemption of Israel. The other texts included in the complex consists of – Prayer (תפלת) of R. Šimʿon b. Yoḥai,7 Future Events (עתידות) of R. Šimʿon b. Yoḥai,8 Order of the Signs that will Anticipate the Coming of the Messiah (סדרן של אותות שיבואו קודם ביאת משיח).9 These texts should best be understood as the different results of a gradual process of reshaping and adaptation of the Secrets. Moreover, the so-called Urbach’s Homily – an originally independent text likely composed in the 13th century – was very likely incorporated into the Prayer and the Order of the Signs, as hypothesised by Ephraim Urbach, who first published the homily.10 Evidence for this is provided by a series of fragments from the Cairo Genizah, dated to the late 12th century, that originally formed a single textual unit closely connected in particular to the Order of the Signs. These fragments do not contain the portion of text deriving from Urbach’s homily, demonstrating that the latter was only later incorporated into the texts composing the Complex of R. Šimʿon b. Yoḥai.11
As noted above, this fragment includes mention of the battle in the plain of Acre – an element which suggests a particularly close textual affinity between the fragment discussed here and the Prayer, the Order of the Signs and Urbach’s Homily.
Ms. Heb. 577.2/6, recto. The National Library of Israel. "Ktiv" Project
The text reads as follows:
NB: possible alternative readings are given in round brackets, (conjectural) reconstruction in square brackets
Recto
1 ……………………………אל בלאד ואלדין
2 ……………………………איאם אל
3 [מס?]יח ב…ל (?) …… ייקנה
4 ובעד דלך ........[י]סיר כל עס[כר?]..........ה(?).....עלי טו(?)
5 ג............סלך עלי אן יקצדון אל פראת
6 פי(?).....[ו?]ן עלי אל בלאד גריבה לם תסלך ותסמע
7 מלוך אלשרק בהם פיכרגון עליהם חמייה
8 ותקע בינהם וקעה לם ירי מתלהא ולא
9 י[ס]מע בהא אל[י] אן ינקלב מא אל פראת דמא
10 מן כתרה̈ אל קתלאהם ומן תלך אל אואן
11 תצ̇עף אל ממלכתין גמיעא אל משרקיון ואל
12 מגרביין (מגרביון?) ותגד דלך מביין פי תרי עשר
13 למן יפהמה פי נבווה זכריה ע̇א̇ס̇
14 ובעד הדה אל אמור ואל עלאמאת יט̇הר מלך
15 מן אל תרך ויקים ג̇ אשהר ופי אול מא ימלך
16 יאכד גמיע אלמואסיר [י]צאדרהום ויאכד
17 אמואלהם ויקתלהם בעד דלך ופי הדא אל
Ms. Heb. 577.2/6, recto. The National Library of Israel. "Ktiv" Project
Verso
1 זמאן לא ינש[ף?]................
2 פי אל עאלם לא..................
3 וי(?).................................גמיע [אל?]
4 עאלם וכל מ[א] הב ו[דב?]......חמה ויכון שר... [אל?]ממלכה
5 היובא לה גיוש האילה ועסאכר עט̇[ימ?]ה
6 תם אן הדא אל מלך ימד ידה [אל?]י קום.....[ת]
7 ויקתל מנה[ו?]ם כלקא עט̇ימא אלי אן יכרגון
8 ען מדאהבהם ויבטל מנהום ג̇ אשיא אל
9 סבת ואל כתאנה ואל צלאה וינדפעון מן
10 בין ידיה אלי אמאכן מחגובא ויכונון פי שדה
11 עט̇ימה ופי הדא אל זמאן ליס ראחה לאחד
12 פי אל עאלם לא כאץ ולא עאם ולא מתוסט
13 ותנקטע ארזאק אל כלק ויחל פי אל עאלם
14 [ד?] אשיא וגוע וובא וסייף וסבי
15 ובעד הד[א?] אל אמור אל ג̇ שהור יתיר אללה
16 אל ערב ויצעדון אל רום ואל אפרנג אגמעין
17 בעסאכר האילה אלי בלאד אל שאם ויגתמעון
18 ממלכה̈ [אל] ערב פי אמם לא תחצא ותקע
19 בינהם וקעה פי מרג עכא אלי אן יכוץ̇12 יכוץ̇
Translation
NB: Due to the many lacunae in the text, it is, of course, hard to establish a meaning when there is no or insufficient context. Thus, we could only translate single words in the most damaged portions of the text. In other cases, we indicated our uncertainty with question marks. Some conjectures are presented in the comments to the text. Since the lines of the translated text do not correspond 1:1 to the lines of the fragment, we decided not to number the lines of the translated text.
Recto
…………………………………… the land(s) and those/the religion (wa-llaḏīna / wa-l-dīn)
…………………………………………………………………… days of the
[Mess]iah………………………………………………………………………(?)
And after this ………. every ar[my] marches ([ya]sīr) …(?)
…until they walk up to the Euphrates.
[…] to the foreign lands which the kings of the East have neither heard of nor travelled in and they attack them zealously (ḥamīyatan).
A battle occurs between them which has never been seen nor heard of, until the water of the Euphrates turns into blood because of the multitude of their killed ones. From that time onwards the two kingdoms – the Easterners and the Westerners – both become weak. This is apparent in the Tre Asar (i.e. the Twelve Minor Prophets) for whomever understands it in the prophecy of Zechariah, peace be upon him.
After these events and signs a king of the Turks appears and will remain there (yuqīm) (probably meaning: to reign) for three months. In the beginning of his reign he takes all the wealthy people, presses them hard, takes their money and kills them afterwards. And in this
Verso
time … does not become dr[y] ….
In the world …. no/not ………….
………………………………….all the
World and everyone … and it is ….
(?) …… tremendous troops (ǧuyūsh hāʾila) and big armies (ʿasākir ʿaẓīma).
Then this king lays his hands on a group of people […], kills many of them until they abandon their religious creeds (maḏāhibihim) and makes three things invalid (probably meaning: for them): (keeping) the Sabbath, the circumcision and the prayer. They flee from his presence to hiding places and are in great distress.
At this time there is no rest for anyone in the world, neither for the elite nor the commoners nor the middle class. The means of subsistence of humankind cease to exist, and in the world [four (?)] things occur: hunger, plague, violence (lit.: “sword”) and captivity.
After these events which last three months (v.s.) God stirs up the Arabs, and the Byzantines (al-Rūm) together with the Franks (al-Ifranǧ), with huge armies, ascend to the Levant. The kingdom of the Arabs unites with countless nations and a battle occurs between them on the plain of Akko (marǧ ʿakkā) until it [maybe meaning: the horse (?)] fords (yakhūḍ) […].
Some notes on peculiar orthographic and linguistic features found in the text:
There are some linguistic and orthographic features of the text which are non-classical in nature.
To begin with, the definite article “al-” is (almost) consistently written separately from the word which it defines. This practice is known to have become widespread starting from the 15th century CE, although there are also instances of this phenomenon recorded for the 11th century CE.13 However, as the anonymous reviewer of this FOTM informed us, in the fragment we are dealing with the separation of the definite article is not as strong as in post-classical Judeo-Arabic texts. According to them, this palaeographical feature suggests a dating of the fragment to the 13th or 14th c. CE. Other conspicuous features include: 1) the use of double yod and waw to indicate gemination (instead of implicitly using a shadda), see mubayyan (recto, line 12), nubuwwa (recto, line 13); interestingly, the word sayf (sword) is also written with two yod, which might be considered an indication of its pronunciation; 2) the plene spelling of the short vowel “u” in the suffix “-hum” (recto, line 16 and verso, line 8; however, this feature is not used consistently throughout the manuscript);14 3) the writing of alef instead of he for representing a tāʾ marbūṭa, see amākin maḥǧūba (verso, line 10); 4) the writing of alef instead of alif maqṣūra, see lā tuḥṣā (verso, line 18).
Concerning the inflection of verbs, there are two instances of a hypercorrection, i.e. the use of a grammatically correct form in a wrong syntactic context, see an yaqṣidūn (recto, line 5) and an yaḫruǧūn (verso, line 7) (instead of the classical an yaqṣidū and an yaḫruǧū).15
Regarding the usage of diacritics and dots, we find that a dot is consistently used for the emphatic sounds ḍād and ẓāʾ. In one instance (or possibly two) a tāʾ marbūṭa is marked by two dots (recto, line 10: kaṯra(t); (doubtful) verso, line 18: mamlaka). On verso, line 8, we find ג̇ indicating the numerical value three. Furthermore, for the abbreviation of the eulogy “ʿalayhi al-salām” the scribe uses ע̇א̇ס (recto, line 13).
In line 6 of the recto, it says “al bilād gharība” (the foreign lands) instead of the double use of the definite article for both the governing noun and its attribute as would be expected in classical texts. What is more, in line 10 of the recto, the scribe writes “al qatlāhum” (their killed ones), i.e. he is using the definite article and a suffixed pronoun instead of just using the suffixed pronoun (qatlāhum) which would be the classical form. Both of these formulations are quite likely only a scribal mistake, pointing either to the scribe’s negligence at that very moment of writing or to his lacking knowledge of Classical Arabic grammar, and not to a linguistic phenomenon.16
Commentary on the text
The term “messiah” seems to appear on the recto, line 3 (ayyām al-[mas]īḥ, “the days of the [Mess]iah”). However, it remains unclear to which specific messiah it refers. Indeed, most medieval Jewish eschatological texts envision the advent of two messiahs: Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah ben David. Messiah ben Joseph (also known as Messiah ben Ephraim) – a figure that probably emerged in the first centuries of the rabbinic era – is a suffering messiah. He is destined to wage war against the eschatological enemies of Israel (primarily the Edomites, i.e., the Christians) and to establish an ephemeral messianic kingdom in Jerusalem before being defeated and killed by Armilus (the “Antichrist” of Jewish eschatology) or by other foes.17 The true initiator of the messianic era will be Messiah ben David, who will be sent to the Jews by God after the death of Messiah ben Joseph. Based on a comparative analysis with the other texts of the “Šimʿon b. Yoḥai Complex” (henceforth, Complex), in particular the Prayer of Šimʿon b. Yoḥai and Order of the Signs that will Anticipate the Coming of the Messiah, it is probable that in our fragment the reference is to Messiah ben Joseph.
The great battle on the Euphrates (verso, line 19) is mentioned in the Prayer and in Order of the Signs, where it is also described as a terrible clash that will cause the water of the river to turn into blood. In the Judeo-Arabic fragment, the battle has huge proportions, but it is not specified that it was foretold by the prophets, as is clarified in other writings of the Complex. Other discrepancies between the fragment and the Complex can be noticed on the recto, line 11, as here both the eastern and the western kingdoms will become weak, while in the Prayer and in the Order of the Signs only the eastern kingdom is destined to fall. Furthermore, in line 13 we read that these signs were foreseen by Zechariah, but this is the only mention of this prophet in this context within the Complex. Shachar has connected this reference to Zechariah 918, but no precise correspondence can be found between the two texts. Nonetheless, the author of the fragment was probably referring to the catastrophic destiny that awaits the nations surrounding the land of Israel, as prophesied in Zechariah 9.
Another interesting difference between the fragment and the other texts of the Complex is visible on lines 14-15: a king of the Turks will arise and reign for three months. During his domination, he shall deprive the rich of their wealth and persecute the Jews, as we read on the verso, lines 6-13. A king behaving this precise way is present in the Complex, too, but, in these texts, he is called “a king strong of face” (מלך עז פנים).19 The “king strong of face” is a recurring negative character in Jewish Medieval eschatology, and his origins go back to the book of Daniel, where he can be identified with Antiochus IV Epiphanes (d. 164 BCE), who tried to “hellenicise” the Jewish customs.20 It is likely that the author of our fragment’s text identified this enemy of the final era with a Turkish, i.e. Seljuk (?), ruler of his own age.
The following lines enumerate a series of events - such as murders and religious persecutions - that can be considered as “birth pangs of the messiah” (חבלי המשיח):21 according to the Jewish eschatological tradition (which is shared in Christian and Islamic tradition), the final stages of human history, which will lead to the coming of the messiah and to the instauration of his kingdom, will be characterised by a series of battles, persecutions, plagues and famines.22
The final lines of our fragment clarify the historical context in which it was redacted: the clashes between Arabs, Byzantines and Franks refer to the period of the Crusades in the Holy Land. The fragment closes with a hint to the battle of Acre, a theme recurring also in the Prayer and in the Order of the Signs. Both texts are based on the so-called Urbach’s Homily, which describes a brutal clash between the children of Ishmael (i.e. the Muslims) and the Edomites (i.e. Christians) in the plain of Acre, “until a horse sinks to its flank in blood.”23 Our fragment probably reported the very same image, as it apparently ends with the words “until it fords…”. Even though the verb used is not the same (“to sink” vs “to ford, to wade through”), it could also allude to the image of a horse making its way through the blood, which corresponds to the one that appears in other texts of the Complex. In all these texts, including our fragment, this scene probably refers to the battle between Christians and Muslims in Acre in 1189-1191 or, as hypothesised by Urbach, to the war between Venetians and Genoeses (1250-1258).24 Apart from the Hebrew texts of the Complex, the battle of Acre also appears in a Judeo-Arabic version of the Sefer Zerubbavel that can be dated to the year 970 C.E.25, while the original Hebrew version was presumably composed after the Byzantine recapture of Jerusalem in 628 CE, which ended fourteen years of Persian rule.26 Thus, this is another instance in which apocalyptic and eschatological texts reuse narrative topoi in order to actualise the older prophecies and make them suitable for contemporary readers.
The use of the term “Franks” (al-ifranǧ), along with its close relation to apocalyptic-eschatological texts (re)shaped at the end of the 13th century, indicates that the text preserved in it was redacted in the period of the clashes between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. This makes the Judeo-Arabic fragment an important witness to the Jewish eschatological literature that was widespread in the time of the Crusades and, moreover, it argues for the inclusion into the “Šimʿon b. Yoḥai Complex”.
Footnotes
1 Our thanks are due to Dr. Nadia Vidro for her very thorough proofreading, including remarks and corrections. We also want to express our thanks to the anonymous reviewer for their remarks.
2 For this typology, see Israel J. Yuval, Two Nations in your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman, Berkley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press 2006 (or. ed. Tel-Aviv, 2000 [Hebr.]), pp. 3 ff.
3 Saʽadya Gaʼon (9th - 10th centuries) and R. Hai Gaʼon (10th - 11th centuries) are the main authors to propose this reading of Ob 1:21. See Sebastiano Crestani, “Jewish Eschatological Expectations during the Crusades: A Response to a Period of Crisis and Persecutions”, Henoch 45 (1/2023), pp. 140-154, esp. p. 142.
4 See the cataloguing data on https://www.nli.org.il/en/discover/manuscripts/hebrew-manuscripts/itempage?docId=PNX_MANUSCRIPTS990024968950205171&vid=MANUSCRIPTS (id. number 990024968950205171) (last viewed on 02.02.2026)
5 Uri Zvi Shachar, A Pious Belligerence: Dialogical Warfare and the Rhetoric of Righteousness in the Crusading Near East, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2021, pp. 141-142.
6 For the definition “Šimʽon b. Yoḥai Complex” see John C. Reeves, Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader, Leiden; Boston: Brill 2006, p. 76.
7 For an introduction and an English translation of both the Secrets and the Prayer, see Reeves, Trajectories, pp. 76-105.
8 This text has been transmitted in a codex preserved at the Biblioteca Palatina of Parma (Italy), ms. 2785, copied in 1289, that was first edited by Chaim Horowitz, Bet ʿEqed ha-Aggadot, Frankfurt am Main 1882, pp. 38-55.
9 This text, still unedited, has been transmitted in two codices held by the Biblioteca Palatina of Parma, mss. 2342 and 3122. Both codices can be dated to the end of the 13th century. Shachar has treated this text in A pious Belligerence, pp. 135-143.
10 Ephraim Urbach, “A Midrash of Redemption from Late Crusader Times”, Eretz Israel 10 (1970-71), pp. 58-63 [Heb.]. Urbach published this homily from a manuscript held by the Bodleian Library of Oxford, Opp. Add. 4° 128, dated to the end of the 14th century. Another manuscript, unknown to Urbach, transmits the same text: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 550, 16th-17th century.
11 See Sebastiano Crestani, “New Insights into a Jewish Eschatological Text from the Cairo Genizah”, Materia Giudaica XXX (2025) (forthcoming).
12 Word maybe erased by the scribe.
13 See Magdalen M. Connolly, “Splitting Definitives: The Separation of the Definite Article in Medieval and Pre-Modern Written Judeo-Arabic”, Journal of Jewish Languages 9, 1 (2021), pp. 32-76, and the literature cited therein.
14 For this and other orthographic features of Late Judaeo-Arabic see e.g. Geoffrey Khan, “Judaeo-Arabic”, in Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Volume 2, Leiden; Boston; Brill 2006, pp. 526-536, here p. 528.
15 For the phenomenon of hypercorrections see Joshua Blau, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic: A Study of the Origins of Middle Arabic, Third Revised Edition, Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute 1999, pp. 29 ff.
16 We thank Prof. Ofra Tirosh-Becker, Dr. Rachel Hasson and the anonymous reviewer for sharing their assessment of these forms with us.
17 On Messiah ben Joseph see David C. Mitchell, Messiah ben Joseph, Newton Mearns, Scotland: Campbell Publications 2016, even though many of the scholar’s assumptions on the origins of this Messiah must be taken with caution. See also David Berger, “Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism: Messiah son of Joseph, Rabbinic Calculations, and the Figure of Armilus”, AJS Review 10, 2 (1985), pp. 141-164. On Armilus see Lutz Greisiger, “Armilos – Vorläufer, Entstehung und Fortleben der Antichrist-Gestalt im Judentum”, in M. Delgado - V. Leppin (eds.), Der Antichrist: Historische und Systematische Zugänge, W. Kohlhammer Verlag: Stuttgart 2011, pp. 207-240.
18 Shachar, A Pious Belligerence, p. 141, note 45.
19 Translation by Reeves, Trajectories, p. 54, in the context of the influential apocalypse known as Sefer Zerubbavel (see below). The “king strong of face” appears in another eschatological text too, Aggadat Mašiaḥ (see Reeves, Trajectories, p. 145).
20 See Dn 8:23; 7:25; 11:21. For the expression “strong of face”, see also Dt 28:50; Prv 21:29; Eccl 8:1.
21 See b. Šabbat 118a; b. Pesaḥim 118a; b. Sanhedrin 98b.
22 See Ephraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, 2 vols., Jerusalem: Magnes Press 1979, vol. I, p. 650.
23 Translation by Reeves, Trajectories, p. 99 (Prayer of R. Šimʽon b. Yoḥaʼi). The same image recurs in Urbach’s Homily, in Order of the Signs and in a brief eschatological piyyuṭ known as On that day (אותו היום), transmitted in a single folio found in the Cairo Geniza, preserved today at the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York (Schechter 5). This text was first published by Louis Ginzberg in Genizah Studies in memory of Doctor Solomon Schechter, Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, vol. VII, New York 1928, pp. 310-312. Bernard Lewis translated the text into English in “On That Day: A Jewish Apocalyptic Poem on the Arab Conquests”, in Mélanges d'Islamologie. Volume dédié à la mémoire de A. Abel Salmon, Leiden 1974, pp. 197-200. According to Lewis, the piyyuṭ was compiled in the 7th century, in the context of the wars between Byzantines and Arabs for the possession of the Holy Land. However, Lewis himself admits that “no major engagement in the valley of Acre is recorded” (p. 199, note 11).
24 Urbach, “A Midrash of Redemption”, p. 60, note 20. Urbach connects this image to the clash between Venetians and Genoeses because the Homily mentions the “peoples of Italy” gathering in Acre.
25 See Moshe Gil, “The Apocalypse of Zerubbabel in Judaeo-Arabic”, Revue des études juives 165, 1-2 (2006), pp. 1-98.
26 See Reeves, Trajectories, p. 47; Martha Himmelfarb, Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire: A History of the Book of Zerubbabel, Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England 2017, pp. 28 ff.
Bibliography
Berger, David, “Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism: Messiah son of Joseph, Rabbinic Calculations, and the Figure of Armilus”, AJS Review 10, 2 (1985), pp. 141-164
Blau, Joshua, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic: A Study of the Origins of Middle Arabic, Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, Third Revised Edition 1999.
Connolly, Magdalen M., “Splitting Definitives: The Separation of the Definite Article in Medieval and Pre-Modern Written Judeo-Arabic”, Journal of Jewish Languages 9, 1 (2021), pp. 32-76
Crestani, Sebastiano, “Jewish Eschatological Expectations during the Crusades: A Response to a Period of Crisis and Persecutions”, Henoch 45 (1/2023), pp. 140-154
- “New Insights into a Jewish Eschatological Text from the Cairo Genizah”, Materia Giudaica XXX (2025) (forthcoming)
Gil, Moshe, “The Apocalypse of Zerubbabel in Judaeo-Arabic”, Revue des études juives 165, 1-2 (2006), pp. 1-98
Ginzberg, Louis, Genizah Studies in memory of Doctor Solomon Schechter, Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, vol. VII, New York 1928
Greisiger, Lutz, “Armilos – Vorläufer, Entstehung und Fortleben der Antichrist-Gestalt im Judentum”, in M. Delgado - V. Leppin (eds.), Der Antichrist: Historische und Systematische Zugänge, W. Kohlhammer Verlag: Stuttgart 2011, pp. 207-240
Himmelfarb, Martha, Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire: A History of the Book of Zerubbabel, Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England 2017
Horowitz, Chaim, Bet ʽEqed ha-Aggadot, Frankfurt am Main 1882
Khan, Geoffrey, “Judaeo-Arabic”, in Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Volume 2, Leiden; Boston; Brill 2006, pp. 526-536
Lewis, Bernards, “On That Day: A Jewish Apocalyptic Poem on the Arab Conquests”, in Mélanges d'Islamologie. Volume dédié à la mémoire de A. Abel Salmon, Leiden 1974, pp. 197-200
Lewis, Bernards, “On That Day: A Jewish Apocalyptic Poem on the Arab Conquests”, in Mélanges d'Islamologie. Volume dédié à la mémoire de A. Abel Salmon, Leiden 1974, pp. 197-200
Mitchell, David C., Messiah ben Joseph, Newton Mearns, Scotland: Campbell Publications 2016
Shachar, Uri Zvi, A Pious Belligerence: Dialogical Warfare and the Rhetoric of Righteousness in the Crusading Near East, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2021
Urbach, Ephraim, “A Midrash of Redemption from Late Crusader Times”, Eretz Israel 10 (1970-71), pp. 58-63 (Heb.)
- The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, 2 vols., Jerusalem: Magnes Press 1979
Yuval, Israel J., Two Nations in your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman, Berkley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press 2006 (or. ed. Tel-Aviv, 2000 [Hebr.])
If you enjoyed this Fragment of the Month, you can find others here.
Contact us: genizah@lib.cam.ac.uk
The manuscripts in this article are part of the Cairo Genizah. To see more items from this collection visit: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/genizah/1