Mišaʾel ben ʿUzziʾel

While Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) is primarily known for having laid the modern foundations of Jewish bibliography, he also devoted himself to a systematic survey of Jewish literature. In Steinschneider’s work the investigation of Jewish writings in Arabic takes a central place. In 1845, he proposed to the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden his magnum opus , a “Jüdisch-Arabische Bibliothek” (Steinschneider, Die arabische Literatur , xlvii). It was well received, and he obtained modest funding for it. It seems that the first part, the Bibliotheca Judaeo-Arabica , which consisted of a chronological survey of Judeo-Arabic literature, had already been completed in 1845. It contained a short biographical sketch of each author known to Steinschneider, arranged chronologically, and an account of their works, including details of available manuscripts and translations, mainly taken from unpublished sources. However, it only reached publication some sixty years later with the appearance of his seminal series of articles “An Introduction to the Arabic Literature of the Jews,” which appeared in 1897–1901 in the Jewish Quarterly Review , and also his Arabische Literatur der Juden (1902), which Steinschneider rightly calls in its foreword his “Lebensarbeit” (p. viii). The former, in which he describes his arduous search for manuscripts throughout Europe, serves as a voluminous introduction to the latter. The Arabische Literatur der Juden is divided into seven sections: (1) Jewish authors in Ancient Arabia; (2) Jewish authors in the East until the end of the Geonic period (1040); (3) Jewish authors in the Muslim West; (4) Jewish in the East, 1041–1500; (5) later Jewish authors (1500–1894); (6) Jewish authors of uncertain date; and (7) anonymous Jewish authors according to subject.

Literature:

Paul Fenton, “Moritz Steinschneider’s Contribution to Judaeo-Arabic Studies,” in Studies on Steinschneider: Moritz Steinschneider and the Emergence of the Science of Judaism in Nineteenth-Century Germany , edited by Reimund Leicht and Gad Freudenthal (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 363–383.

Moritz Steinschneider, “An Introduction to the Arabic Literature of the Jews,” Jewish Quarterly Review 9–13 (1897–1901).

Moritz Steinschneider, Die arabische Literatur der Juden (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1902).