Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest

The dramatic story of the oldest Hebrew Bible in book form The Crown of Aleppo, also known as the Aleppo Codex, is one of the most perfect examples of the traditional Masoretic text of the Bible. Completed circa 930 C.E. in Tiberias by prominent scribes who wrote the lettering and added vowel and cantillation marks, the codex then passed through history until it came to rest at the Great Synagogue of Aleppo, Syria. When the synagogue was burned in a pogrom, the codex was thought to be lost. That is where its great mystery begins. How it survived by being smuggled from the synagogue to the homes of Jewish dignitaries in Syria, and finally to its current location in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, is the story of this book. Contains maps and photographs of the Aleppo Codex, the Great Synagogue of Aleppo, and key dignitaries associated with the rescue of the codex and its relocation to Israel. These images appear together for the first time in this volume.

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
The Catastrophe of 1947	p. 3
Origins of the Crown and Its Significance	p. 15
Development of the Codex	p. 15
Tiberias	p. 15
The Development of Notational Systems and the Advent of the Tiberian Masoretes	p. 18
The Writing of the Crown	p. 23
Determining the Crown's Authorship	p. 25
Mainmonides and the Crown	p. 27
The Karaite Question	p. 33
The Story of Abraham Firkovich	p. 37
The Significance of the Crown	p. 42
The Crown's History from 11th-Century Jerusalem to 20th-Century Aleppo	p. 47
The Crown in Jerusalem	p. 47
The Crown in Fostat	p. 49
Maimonides' Descendants and the Crown's Transfer to Aleppo	p. 50
Syria	p. 54
Aleppo	p. 54
The Jewish Community of Aleppo	p. 56
The Great Synagogue	p. 61
Aleppan Traditions Regarding the Crown	p. 63
Gathering Storm Clouds	p. 65
The Quest to Save the Crown	p. 71
Efforts to Save the Crown before the 1947 Pogrom	p. 71
The Crown's Whereabouts in the Pogrom's Immediate Aftermath	p. 75
The Search for the Crown	p. 85
Murad Faham, Rescuer of the Crown	p. 88
Faham and the Fate of the Crown	p. 91
The Disputed Crown and Its Restoration	p. 101
The Crown Arrives in Israel	p. 101
The Crown Gains a Permanent Home	p. 106
The Condition of the Crown before the 1947 Pogrom	p. 109
The Current Condition of the Crown	p. 110
The Order of the Books in the Crown	p. 113
The Missing Sections	p. 114
Extant Crown Pages from Photographs and a Fragment	p. 120
Recovery and Reconstruction of the Text	p. 122
Epilogue: The Future of the Crown	p. 128
The Fate of the Missing Pages	p. 128
A Mandate to Restore the Crown	p. 130
Endnotes	p. 141
Glossary	p. 163
Bibliography	p. 175
Index	p. 187
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex

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