Bidspirit auction | (YEMEN). Aboab, Yitzhak.  Menorath Hama’or

(YEMEN). Aboab, Yitzhak.  Menorath Hama’or [ethics]. With: Pirush Nefesh Yehudah. Manuscript finely written in Hebrew in a Yemenite hand. Inscription by owner, Avraham ben Yahya Elmaliach. Last page signed by copyist Musa ibn Yosef Al-Nahami. ff. 212, lacking f. 57. Wormed and variously stained in places, occasionally heavily so. Modern boards. Folio. Yemen 19th century. The commissioning of such an opulent manuscript by a Yemenite scribe presents an historical puzzle: The preparation of such a luxurious work in Yemen is highly uncommon, given both the Yemenite Jewish community’s oppression-induced poverty, as well as its preference for Biblical and Halachic texts over Rabbinic philosophy. At the same time, it is even less likely that the work was commissioned by a European patron, as there was hardly a need for a manuscript edition of this widely printed text.