#moses ben jacob ibn zabara

[gliklofhameln]

The Kennicott Bible with accompanying commentary volume, London: Facsimile Editions, 1985

The Kennicott Bible takes its name from Benjamin Kennicott (1718-1783), the Oxford canon who acquired this exquisite manuscript and in April 1771, sold it to Oxford’s Radcliffe Library, which then transferred it to the Bodleian Library in 1872. The book, which includes the text of both the entire Hebrew Bible and Rabbi David Kimhi’s (1160-1235) popular grammatical treatise Sefer mikhlol, was produced over the course of about ten months by the master scribe, vocaliser, and masorator Moses ben Jacob Ibn Zabara in collaboration with the illuminator and illustrator Joseph Ibn Hayyim. It was completed in the northwestern Spanish city of La Coruña in 1476 on behalf of Isaac ben Don Solomon de Braga, who apparently took it with him into exile after the Spanish expulsion of 1492.

Not only is Ibn Zabara’s text bold and clear, with the micrographic Masorah periodically inscribed in geometric patterns, but Ibn Hayyim’s playful, colourful, and intricate artistic program—inspired by that of the Cervera Bible, as well as by Islamic, Christian, and secular motifs—bears elegant witness to the multiculturalism of pre-expulsion Spain.