Kunteres Perek ba-Shir, Joshua ben Israel Benveniste, [17th-18th century]

Kunteres Perek ba-Shir is a treatise on poetics that was composed at the request of Abraham ben Joseph ha-Levi, in Constantinople in 1635. It is divided into lessons, here called talmud. Fols. 21r-25r contain Jacob Roman’s list of fifty-one Hebrew meters that are similar to Arabic meters, with samples. It is headed: ketzev u-meoznei mishkal ha-shirim ha-ivriyyim le-dimyon shekel shire ha-yismeeliyyim.  Roman’s work, Meoznei Mishkal, is mentioned. At the end is a list, made by the compiler, of technical terms relating to poetry, in Hebrew, Arabic and Italian. Jacob Roman was a bibliographer and writer of Spanish descent; he was born in Constantinople ca. 1570 and died in Jerusalem in 1650.

Sotheby’s is grateful to Menahem Schmelzer z”l and Benjamin Richler for cataloguing this manuscript.

Provenance

Solomon Halberstam (shelf no. 119)

Physical Description

25 leaves (fol. 20 blank) on paper, 8 3/8 x 6 3/8 inches; 213 x 157 mm, written in black ink in a seventeenth-eighteenth-century Sefardi cursive script, modern foliation in pencil; a few small stains, library stamp on first and last leaves. Marbled boards; somewhat worn.

Literature

Hirschfeld (ms. no. 377); a section of Benveniste’s work was published from this manuscript by N. Allony, Mi-Sifrut Yeme ha-Beinanyim, (1945), pp. 39-42