Novellae on Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Bava Metzia, Solomon ben Abraham Ibn Adret (Rashba) and Moses Ben Nahman (Nahmanides), [Italy, 16th century]

Fols. 1-128v: One of only three extant copies of the Novellae on Babylonian Talmud tractate Bava Mezia by Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret [Rashba] (chapters 1-5).

Fols. 128v -170v: Novellae on Babylonian Talmud tractate Bava Mezia by Moses ben Nahman [Nahmanides] (chapters 6-10). These novellae were consulted for variants in some of the recent editions of the novellae of Nahmanides.

The script and condition of this manuscript suggests that it was once joined with Montefiore ms. 85.

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

Provenance

David Melli (owner’s inscription, fol. 1r) — Abraham Joseph Solomon Graziano (owner’s inscription, fol. 1r) — Solomon Halberstam (shelf no. 311)

Physical Description

170 leaves on paper, 9 ¼ x 6 ½ inches; 235 x 165 mm, written in brown ink in Italian cursive script, catchwords, modern foliation in pencil (with errors), small slip bound in; 2 holes in fol. 1 repaired with loss of text in 7 lines, marginal repairs to fols 1-8, 28 and 170, fols. 39-40, 167-168, and 170 guarded, repairs along inside margins of 7 leaves, dampstaining throughout upper half of text. Black library buckram; flyleaves browned. 

Literature

Hirschfeld (ms. no. 83); the novellae by the Rashba were edited from this manuscript and from a British Library codex and published in Jerusalem, 1991.