Tachkemoni

Al’Harizi, Judah

Solomon and Joseph Yaabetz

Constantinople

1578

Second edition

Vinograd, Const. 270; Yaari, Const. 196; Adams J-402.

Spanish born Judah ben Solomon Al’Harizi (1170-1235) was a preeminent poet and translator from Arabic into Hebrew, especially of the works by Maimonides. Sepher Tachkemoni is Al'Harizi’s major work of poetry, completed in 1220, during the course of the poet’s extensive travels through the Near East. He includes here a travelogue from Spain through Provence to Egypt, Syria, and Babylonia - complementing the travels of Benjamin of Tudela fifty years earlier. He writes of personalities encountered in the various cities along the way: Rabbis Meir Halevi (RaMaH) Abulafia of Toledo; Sheshet of Barcelona, Kalonymus ha-Nasi of Beaucaire, Abraham Maimonides of Cairo and the princes of Narbonne. See Waxman, Vol. I, pp. 462-465; Judith Dishon, “Medieval Panorama in the Book of Tahkemoni,” PAAJR, Vol. LVI (1990), pp. 11-27