Manuscript Background

The manuscript that the project explores, MS. Opp. Add. 4° 85, is the second in a set of five that are collectively known as the Oran maḥzor, today conserved at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. The other manuscripts in the Oran maḥzor are MS. Opp. Add. 4° 84 (Vol I), MS. Opp. Add. 4° 86 (Vol III), MS. Opp. Add. 4° 87 (Vol IV), and MS. Opp. Add. 4° 88 (Vol V).

Traditionally, a maḥzor is a collection of Jewish prayers that covers the entire annual religious cycle. In the case of the Oran maḥzor, the manuscripts bring together liturgical prayers covering the entire year, para-liturgical poems, and letters in Hebrew. In addition, they contain Arabic prose and poetry written using Hebrew letters (also known as Judeo-Arabic). The final section of the manuscript in question here, 101v-141r, is where most of the maḥzor’s Arabic poems are located. With the exception of a long narrative lament at the end of the cycle, the poems are organized into suites, each of a which is called a ṭarīq. Like the concept of the nūba that lies at the heart of the modern Andalusi classical music traditions of the Maghrib, some of these ṭarīqs are organized around a single named melodic mode that would have organized the singing of all the poems contained therein, whether in Arabic or in Hebrew. While several scholars have written about this manuscript, this project is the first time that the Judeo-Arabic poems found in the final third of the manuscript have been presented in their entirety.

The maḥzor was likely compiled over the course of the seventeenth century in Oran, perhaps by members of the influential Cansino family, who for generations served as Arabic translators and intermediaries for the Spanish authorities who ruled Oran for several centuries. The section we focus on here was completed in exile, likely in the Tuscan port city of Livorno, after 1669, the year when the Spanish authorities expelled the Jews from Oran; in fact, the cycle of poems ends with a long lament detailing the Jews’ expulsion to southern Europe. The maḥzor was acquired around 1834 by the renowned Italian Jewish scholar S. D. Luzzatto. In 1869, two centuries after the expulsion from Oran, the Bodleian Library bought the manuscripts from Luzzatto’s son.

Understanding the Manuscript

The poems gathered here give a glimpse of an early-modern musical and devotional practice among North African Jews who had only recently been expelled from Spain. It also provides a snapshot of the rich musical repertoire of the time and place. Here we find colloquial Arabic and classical Arabic; life-cycle songs and songs about historical people and events; songs about erotic love and songs that are rich in Quranic and Sufi references. Many of the poems are unknown outside this manuscript. Others are today part of the urban classical Andalusi music traditions of the Maghrib countries but appear here in distinctive form.

Another unusual aspect of this collection is that it emerged from a Jewish community that was exiled from Spain but that remained under Spanish rule. Spain conquered Oran in 1509, and it became the largest of its newly acquired outposts along the Maghribi coast; it would not return definitively to Algerian rule until 1792. Unlike in Spain, Jews were permitted to live openly in Oran in the period after 1509, despite various strictures and disadvantages. Under Spanish rule, Jews accounted for as much as a fifth of Oran’s population, and until their expulsion, they played an important role as commercial and diplomatic intermediaries between the Spanish authorities and settlers and the Muslim populations and political figures of the region, including in the nearby kingdom of Tlemcen. The Arabic poems contained here probably reflect the musical repertoire that was current among Arabic speakers in the region, regardless of the religious community to which they belonged.

About the Project

This project emerged from a long-term research project undertaken by Jonathan Glasser (Department of Anthropology, William & Mary), who first learned of the manuscript through reading the work of Edwin Seroussi and Paul Fenton. The task of transcribing the poems began in 2016. The generous support of the Centre d’études maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA) through the efforts of Robert Parks and Karim Ouaras, as well as the Centre de recherche en anthropologie sociale et culturelle (CRASC), allowed for a one-day workshop about the manuscript to be held in Oran in July 2018, which included the participation of Amina Boukail, Ahmed-Amine Dellaï, Lamis Fardeheb, Jonathan Glasser, the late Hadj Miliani, Mourad Ouamara, and Youssef Touaibia. A Drapers Fellowship administered by the Reves Center for Global Studies at William & Mary permitted a two-week work trip to the Bodleian Library that was hosted by Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in June 2023. The transcription of the manuscript was finalized in collaboration with Amina Boukail (Department of Arabic Literature, University of Jijel) and Saliha Senouci (CRASC). The website has been built with the help of Rachel McGraw (Class of 2024) under the guidance of William & Mary Libraries staff Deborah Cornell, Justin Dalton, Rachel N. Hogan, and Rosie Liljenquist, and with additional support from the Department of Anthropology and the William & Mary program in Judaic Studies. At the Bodleian, César Merchan-Hamann has been a crucial source of information regarding the circumstances of the acquisition, as well as a guide to the manuscript itself.

How to use this site:

This project aims to provide you with as direct access to the texts in question as possible. The texts are organized by ṭarīq, in the order they appear in the manuscript. We present a digital image of each Arabic poem, accompanied by transcriptions in Hebrew and Arabic script, standardized Arabic, and in English translation. The transcription in Hebrew orthography aims to present the manuscript in printed Hebrew letters, including the original page layout and incidental markings, some of which map poetic phrasing and musical structure (in particular, the return to the refrain). The transcription in Arabic orthography is a letter-by-letter rendering from Hebrew orthography into Arabic orthography, preserving the textual layout and incidental markings in the manuscript. The rendering that is marked Standardized Version rewrites the Arabic according to standard conventions regarding Arabic spelling and poetic layout. The working English translations follow the layout of the standardized version. For those texts to which we have added them, explanatory notes are at the bottom of each page.

The current project does not include the Hebrew poems that interlace with the Arabic ones. However, in order to give a sense of the larger structure of this section of the manuscript, we provide the first line of these Hebrew poems in the table of contents. For those Arabic poems that end with lines in Hebrew, we have provided the transcription in Hebrew, as well as an English translation presented in brackets. In the Arabic versions, we have presented these lines with a dotted line.

In those places where we are uncertain of the transcription or meaning, we have placed the relevant words or phrases in brackets, or we have provided empty brackets.

This is a work in progress that we plan to regularly update, and we welcome your feedback, questions, and suggestions at jglasser@wm.edu.

Working Bibliography

Ayoun, Richard. “Les Juifs d’Oran avant la conquête française.” Revue Historique, no. 267 (1982): 375-390.

Boukail, Amina and Jonathan Glasser. “The Oran Maḥzor as a Source for the Study of Multiple Histories.” The Jewish Languages Bookshelf. Oxford: Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages, OCHJS, 2023, https://thebookshelf.hypotheses.org/1453

Brody, Heinrich.“Gürteldegichte des Ṭodrōs Abū-L’Āfija.” Mitteilungen des Forschungsinstituts für Hebräische Dichtung, no. 1 (1933): 1-93.

Fenton, Paul B. “Une qaṣîda historique sur l’expulsion des Juifs d’Oran en 1669.” In Présence juive au Maghreb: Hommage à Haïm Zafrani, edited by Joseph Tedghi and Nicole S. Serfaty, 451-455. Paris: Editions Bouchene, 2004.

Hasson, Rachel. “Al-Qaṣīda al-Fiyyāšiyya – an old-new poem found in Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts: T-S NS 224.4 and RNL Yevr.-Arab. II:1741.” Cambridge University Library Fragment of Month: November 2020, https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/fragment-month/fotm-2020/fragment-9

Hazan, Ephraim. Ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit be-algiriyah. Lod: Orot Yahadut ha-Magreb, 2009.

Hess, Andrew C. The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Israel, Jonathan. “The Jews of Spanish North Africa, 1600-1669.” Transactions and Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England), no. 26 (1974-1978): 71-86.

Luzzatto, Samuel David. Sefer kerem ḥemed IV, Prague: M.J. Landau, 1839.

Martsiyano, Eliyahu Refa’el. Sefer malkhei yeshurun. Jerusalem: Makhon ha-Rasham, 1999.

Reynolds, Dwight. “Lost Virgins Found: The Arabic Songbook Genre and an Early North African Exemplar.” Quaderni di Studi Arabi, no. 7 (2012): 69-105. 

Schaub, Jean-Frédéric. Les juifs du roi d’Espagne: Oran 1509-1669. Paris: Hachette Littératures, 1999. 

Seroussi, Edwin. “Music of the Maghrebi Jews in North-Africa and Israel.” In Perceptions et Réalités au Maroc: Relations Judéo-Musulmanes, Actes du Congrès Marrakech-Paris, 14-22 octobre 1995, edited by Robert Assaraf and Michel Abitbol. Casablanca: CRJM Maroc, 1998.

Shehadeh, Haseeb. تسبيحتان للمغربي البهلول (Two Eulogies by al-Maghrebi al-Bahloul). The Samaritan News 1159-2260, 13/4/2014, 69-116, http://shomron0.tripod.com/2014/janfeb.pdf

Zafrani, Haïm. Poésie juive en occident musulman. Paris: Geuthner, 1977.