رسالة: Bodl. MS heb. c 28/45–46

الوصف

A defense of the pietists in Egypt, written by the Nagid in the form of a circular to the judges under his jurisdiction. At the time a number of rabbinic judges across Egypt had initiated a campaign to excommunicate and brand pietists as heretics, in response to the perceived excesses and heretical anomalies of some of them. The original accusations have not survived, but in his rejoinder the Nagid urges caution and restraint. The circular is undated, but the handwriting of the Nagid is unmistakably that of Abraham Maimonides. The document consists of forty eight lines, preceded by a title page containing another four lines. This is a draft, written in the Nagid’s own hand; he left blank spaces for the copyist to fill in the quotations from the Bible and the Talmud alluded to in the text. (Information from Goitein, “Abraham Maimonides on Pietists," Journal of Jewish Social Studies 16 (1965), 109–114 and Russ-Fishbane, Judaism, Sufism, and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt, 73–74) EMS