Aaron Ben Gershon Abu Al-Rabi - Works

Works

Aaron states that he wrote a Hebrew grammar entitled "Ha-Meyasher" (The Leveler of the Road); "Maṭṭeh Aharon," referred to above, a cabalistic or metaphysical work; "Nezer ha-Ḳodesh" (The Crown of Holiness); "Peraḥ ha-Elohut" (The Blossoming of the Godhead), probably of a similar character, and "Sefer ha-Nefesh" (The Book of the Soul). All of these works are known only through his own quotations in his supercommentary on Rashi. This work, published from an incomplete manuscript, together with another supercommentary on Rashi by Samuel Almosnino, by Moses Albelda, and by Jacob Canizal, is one of the earliest books printed at Constantinople, and is therefore very rare. According to his own testimony, it was written in 1420 (as Perles has shown); but he intended to compose, or, as Perles thinks, actually did compose, a larger commentary on the Pentateuch. Perles has furnished ample proof that Aaron Aldabi—or, as he called himself, Aaron Alrabi—was a man of great originality and merit, and it is to be hoped that his lost works will be discovered, and that editions of his commentary, based on clear manuscripts existing in Oxford and elsewhere, will fully vindicate his character, though Graetz and Karpeles, in their histories, have attacked him.

J. H. Schorr, in "Zion," 1840, first called attention to Abu al-Rabi, erroneously calling him Aaron ben Mose Alrabi; but, owing to a misunderstanding of his remarks, he ascribes to him the strange assertion that Moses translated the Pentateuch from the Arabic into Hebrew—a misunderstanding repeated by Grätz, "Gesch. d. Juden" (third edition), viii. 250, and by Karpeles, "Gesch. der Jüdischen Literatur," p. 771—whereas the author, in his commentary upon Gen. xviii. 5, referring to the rabbinical Haggadah that the angels who came to Abraham appeared as Arabs, says that they spoke in Arabic, and that Moses rendered their words in Hebrew—a remark which he repeats in his comments upon Gen. xxiv. 23 and Ex. ii. 10. Zunz, "Z. G.," pp. 518–520, and Steinschneider, "Cat. Bodl.," call him Alrabi. Aaron's true name, however, is given in the acrostic written by him at the end of his published commentary.