Fragments of Šelomo ben Mobārak’s Kitāb al-Taysīr in the Taylor-Schechter Collection

Abstract

Kitāb al-Taysīr, The Book of Facility, is a Hebrew–Arabic biblical dictionary based on the methodology of the Andalusi Hebrew school. This dictionary was probably composed in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. According to tradition, the Kitāb al-Taysīr was composed by a Karaite scholar known as Šelomo ben Mobārak ben Ṣa‘īr in Old Cairo. The manuscript tradition of the Kitāb at -Taysīr is a very rich one, almost unique for a practically unknown medieval work.In this paper five fragments from Taylor Schechter Collection are published, translated, and discussed for the first time.