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Description
Manuscript on parchment. Saragossa, Spain, 1341. 3 volumes. 204, 206, 53 fols. 215x155 mm. Sephardi square script. 2 columns per page.
In the margins, the place usually assigned to the Masorah, the scribe copied David Kimchi's Sefer ha-Shorashim ('The Book of Roots') letters alef to mem, in micrography which forms the contours for ornamental geometric motifs. The continuation of this work was written on full pages at the end of the Bible, now bound as a separate third volume. (In the past, all three present volumes formed one volume).
Colophon (vol. 2, 206v): "Completed ... in the month of Shevat, in the year 5101 ... in the city of Saragossa; I copied it for myself, Ezra ben Moses ... ben Eleazar...
The manuscript is richly oranamented. Most of the initial words of the books are in gold and other colors on a background of ornamental filigree outlines in purple and red. There is an ornamental red frame at the end of each book, including the number of its verses. The colophon is written in red, blue and silver within a double arched gothic frame surmounted by rosettes.
Order of the Latter Prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Minor Prophets. Order of the Hagiographa: Rith, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles (as set down in Tracta Bava Bathra 14b).
From the Estate of the late Dr. Yeshua Shami, donated by his daughters Miriam Kotev, Jerusalem and Susan Rosil, San Francisco, 1946.