Medieval Jewish manuscripts discovered in Afghanistan include an unknown work by Saadia Gaon

This much is known: rare, medieval Jewish manuscripts have been discovered along the fabled Silk Road in Afghanistan and are for sale.

Are they authentic? Scholars who have examined them say they are.

The rest — who found them, where they came from, whether there are more to unearth — remains a mystery.

But the discovery of the 200 or more documents, some in good condition and others crumpled or in fragments, has excited academic interest around the world.

“For the first time we have concrete evidence of Jewish existence (in Afghanistan), not only in the material sense of tombstones or household artifacts, but documents that (tell us) about the spiritual world of the people who lived there 1,000 years ago,” says Haggai Ben-Shammai, academic director of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

The documents are in the hands of several dealers — some in London, some in Geneva and some in Jerusalem. But scholars are eager to see them donated to libraries and museums.

Because they are widespread, it is not clear precisely how many manuscripts there are.

“Who knows, perhaps this is the tip of the iceberg,” says Ben-Shammai. “Maybe with more concentrated effort and more research, more finds await us.”

But scholars holding Israeli passports cannot enter Afghanistan. “We have to rely on the stories of dealers,” he says.

Ben-Shammai notes that tales of how such caches are found are often colourful and difficult to verify.

“There is a story, whether it is true or not I am not able to judge,” he says. In this case, the saga goes like this, “A bunch of foxes were living in a cave and attracted the attention of some villagers . . . ”

Many of the pages are torn from books and are in a variety of languages, including Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian, both written in Hebrew script. They include biblical commentaries, books of Jewish law, liturgical poems, previously unknown work by Saadia Gaon, one of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages, as well as business letters and trading documents, such as deeds of sale.

“I have no doubt these are genuine,” says Shaul Shaked, professor emeritus at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The pages will be of particular interest to those who study the development of languages such as Judeo-Persian. Jewish communities tended to preserve forms of speech typical of earlier periods.

The documents describe a Jewish community that lived, permanently or temporarily, in a trading station between the Muslim conquest and the Mongol invasion. “We had some idea there were Jewish communities in Afghanistan, but this is the first time we have original documents written by them,” say Shaked, an expert in Judeo-Persian.

It was a turbulent period, he says, when a sect known as the Karaite — which rejected the Talmudic or rabbinic tradition and accepted only the Torah as holy scripture — was active.

Shaked said the site is not a geniza, a repository of Hebrew texts that cannot be ordinarily disposed of because they contain God’s name. These storerooms are usually located in or near synagogues or cemeteries. This discovery is much smaller than the great Cairo Geniza, in the Ben Ezra Synagogue, which holds more than 200,000 fragmentary remains.

“We don’t have any indication that the place where this was found was a synagogue,” says Shaked. “This was likely a cave in which people in distress placed documents they cherished and had to flee because of some danger.”

Some reports have speculated about a link to the 10 lost tribes of Israel, a suggestion Ben-Shammai dismisses. “I’m sorry to sound so skeptical, but I don’t believe a word of the story of the lost tribes. I know it is a very popular notion, but there is no reason to believe they were lost. They assimilated with local populations or other Jewish populations.”

News of the find has been rippling through North American universities. “Whenever we find a new archive from an area we didn’t know had this material, that’s exciting,” says Douglas Frayne, a professor in the University of Toronto’s department of Near and Middle Eastern civilizations.

Still, some scholarly publications may refuse to publish articles about the material if their provenance is unknown. There are also ethical concerns about looting of antiquities and smuggling them from the Middle and Near East, Frayne adds.

Indeed, one sale of the Afghanistan manuscripts was halted because a prospective buyer in Jerusalem was concerned about how they arrived in Britain and if they could legally be taken out.
http://www.thestar.com/article/1115485--medieval-jewish-manuscripts-discovered-in-afghanistan-include-an-unknown-work-by-saadia-gaon