The mysteries of the Cairo codex

This column will deal with the Ben Asher family of scribes, father and son, who were attacked by the Sa’adia Gaon, a contemporary Rabbinic scholar, as dangerous heretics. The father, Moshe Ben Asher, wrote the oldest codex, now called the Cairo codex. According to the colophon, it took him 25 years. It was finished in 894 and presented to the Jerusalem Karaite community by the wealthy Karaite Ya’abes Ben Shlomo al-Bably, who had commissioned it and paid all expenses for 25 years. The Cairo codex consists of Neviim, the Prophets, the second book of the Bible.

A scribe can write the entire Bible in a few years. Why did it take Moshe Ben Asher 25 years? I could not find any scholar who had addressed this question, but to me the reason is obvious. I took him 25 years because he had designed 14 carpet pages and meticulously drew them in micrography, complex geometric patterns in which all the lines are actually tiny Hebrew letters that spell out biblical phrases. These are wonderful examples of medieval Jewish art which have been ignored for a thousand years.

There were only 13 carpet pages in 1978 when the sexton of the Karaite synagogue in Cairo, who knew that I was going on to Israel, invited me to photograph the 13 carpet pages and give the slides to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The 14th carpet page was “stolen” said the sexton, and taken to Russia.

I did as I was told but the university wasn’t much interested. “We have a complete set of photos,” they said. They were not interested in carpet pages. A recent inquiry at the Hebrew University failed to unearth my photos or any record of them. I made copies of a few of them and published one on a full page in color in the March 1979 issue of Hadassah Magazine, which I edited for 34 years. I examined it last week. It is magnificent.

I found a second carpet page on the Internet under “micrography.” I learned that the Moses Ben Asher pages are the earliest known examples of micrography. A carpet page with a complex design accompanies the article on the Internet. Also on the Internet under “Cairo codex” you can click all 575 pages of the Prophets, from Joshua to Malachi. But no carpet pages. Here is another example of Karaite indifference to the carpet pages.

During Pesah I took advantage of the Seder which I hosted in Oakland, California, for 26 Lurie relatives to attend the Sabbath services at the Karaite synagogue in Daly City. The service, which superficially resembles Orthodox prayers, is actually totally different except for the reading from the Torah scroll. I counted four scrolls when the ark was opened. A full description of the service will have to wait for another column.

David Ovadia, 62, a former president of the congregation who arrived in the Bay area 50 years ago along with his parents and many other Cairo Karaites, handed me a 21-page brochure on the history of the two Ben Asher codices. It was written in 2004 by Murad al-Qudsi, a Karaite historian who has since passed away. On the last page the historian reproduces one of the carpet pages with the simple caption: “A decorative page from the Moshe Ben Asher codex.” There is no mention of the carpet pages in the 21 pages of the brochure. To the Karaite and non-Karaite scholars, who studied the codex, they were decorations which could be ignored. Only the sexton who asked me to photograph them in 1974 recognized their importance. He told me that that Nasser had proclaimed the codex a national treasure of Egypt but the Karaites intended to smuggle it out. According to Mr. Al-Qudsi they succeeded 10 years later. He writes that the codex left Cairo in 1984. From another source, the New York Times, we learn that there were only a handful of Karaites in Cairo by 1980.

No journalist and no scholar that I know of has seen the Cairo codex since 1980. That is the way the Karaites want it.

The second Ben Asher codex, the Aleppo, is another story. According to its colophone, it was written by Shlomo Ben Buya’tta and was punctuated with little vowel signs by Moshe Ben Asher’s son, Aharon. It was completed and presented to the Karaite community in Jerusalem in 930. Both Ben Asher codicies were part of the loot of the Crusaders who captured Jerusaslem in 1099. They were redeemed a few years later by David Ben Yaphet, a wealthy Cairo Karaite. The Aleppo codex was placed in the hands of the Karaites in Fustat, which is Old Cairo. Fustat is also the site of the oldest functioning Rabbinate synagogue of Ben Ezra, which contained the famous Geniza of medieval Jewish documents.

The Aleppo codex remained in Fustate until the 13th century, when a grandson of Maimonides, Hanagid Abraham, converted the Karaite congregation in Fustat. He acquired the Aleppo codex and it was transferred to the Sephardic congregation in Aleppo. The Aleppo codex consisted of all three books of the Bible. It was intact until 1947 when the Syrians in Aleppo rioted to protest the United Nations decision to partition Palestine. Matti Friedman, a Jerusalem journalist, has written a book on who vandalized the Aleppo codex. It will be published on May 15 by the Algonquin Press. The Hebrew University has published a facsimile of the Aleppo codex with a multipage guide. Amazon Books offers several other books on the codex published in Europe. Amazon Books has nothing on the Cairo codex or its carpet pages. And that is a double mystery

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Lurie is a freelance writer based in Delray Beach, Florida.  He may be contacted at jzel.lurie@sdjewishworld.com