Judah Alharizi

Poet, Philosoph, translator and physician. His most famous treaties-Makama Tahkemoni. Which is divided to fifty chapters. The chapter 46 is called Moznei ha-Dor (The Appraisal of the People) and includes His travel to the East and within the East. The last point in his journey was Aleppo where he resided and passed away in 1225. He started his journey in Toledo in 1215 and voyaged through Catalonia, southern France, Provence and from Marseille he sailed to Alexandria and went to Cairo. From there he found his way to Jerusalem and other localities in the Land of Israel. From there he continued his travel in Syria and Iraq.

Tahkemoni is well known text which is preserved in several Hebrew manuscripts which hold the complete text. Also were preserved hundreds of fragments from the Cairo Genizah. Recently an excellent critical-philological edition of the text came out which has been done by Joseph Yahalom, a great scholar in Hebrew poetry from the Hebrew University and his pupil Naoya Katsumata, Jerusalem 2010.

Alharizi's travel description to the East which is included in Tahkemoni, chapter 46 as it was mentioned above, was published a few years earlier in a scientific edition by Joseph Yahalom and Joshua Blau in a different edition entitled: Masei Yehudah, The Wanderings of Judah Alharizi: Five accounts of his Travels. The editors published the text in two different versions (pp. 49-76). Another description of part of his journey to the East is preserved in a short Makamah which has been published for the first time by Samuel Miklos Stern from Oxford-Bodlean Library (Pocock 50, Neubauer 1976) in: Papers of the Institute of Jewish Studies London, vol. I, Jerusalem 1964, pp. 186-210. This is a brief description of his journey from Spain to the East: Egypt (Alexandria, and Cairo), the Land of Israel (Gaza and Jerusalem) and Syria (Damascus and Aleppo). This Makamah republished in Masei Yehudah as Mahberet ha-Nedivim (Patrons), (pp. 77-89). Those Hebrew versions were composed in different time by Alharizi in the second half of the second decade of the thirteenth century. Alharizi also left his journey description in Arabic which called: Al-rawadah al-aniqah is included in Masei Yehudah, pp. 91-167 which was written later, after 1220. In that edition we can find the Arabic text with Hebrew translation.

The all three versions of the Alharizi's journey to the East in Masei Yehudah are based on various manuscripts and numerous Genizah fragments which most of them came from the Firkovich collection at the National Library in St. Petersburg (mostly from the 13th and 14th centuries).

Hebrew Printed editions (selection)

Translated editions