Abstract
This dissertation analyzes a selection of the works of Yosef ben Tanḥum HaYerushalmi, attempting to situate him in three overlapping contexts. Firstly, I argue that he belongs in the post-classical Arabic literary context of the early Mamluk period. Secondly, I place him among those post-classical medieval Jewish litterateurs who saw themselves as heirs to the tradition of Arabized Hebrew writing created in Muslim Spain between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Lastly, I situate him in the Jewish-Sufi pietist circle of late thirteenth-century Cairo, which revolved around the brothers Obadiah and David Maimonides. Chapter 1 argues that HaYerushalmi’s oeuvre exhibits—in Hebrew-Jewish idiom–—most of the distinctive features scholars have identified as characterizing Mamluk-era Arabic letters, namely 1) a predilection for a type of short, witty poem which came to be known in this period as a maqṭū ͑a, 2) the tendency of poets to anthologize and, in some cases, comment on, their own work, and 3) an increasing interest in translation from other languages. Chapter 2 analyzes an example of HaYerushalmi’s rhymed prose, the Epistle of the Birds, and shows the ways in which it draws on earlier Arabic and Andalusian Hebrew models to illustrate Obadiah Maimonides’s pietist teachings as they relate to the path of the ordinary—rather than the advanced—spiritual aspirant. Chapter 3 analyzes a subset of HaYerushalmi’s praise poems and argues that these also bear the stamp of Obadiah’s pietist teachings, especially as they treat the subjects of Fate (dahr) and of this world (al-dunyā). Obadiah taught that a spiritually evolved individual enjoys divine protection from the slings and arrows of Fate, and exhorted his followers to actively resist worldly, material temptation. HaYerushalmi gives poetic expression to these teachings by intertwining the praise of his mamdūḥs with harsh denigration of dahr and dunyā, synthesizing the genres of shakwā al-dahr and zuhd with madḥ. I also include a critical edition of the hitherto unpublished seventh section of HaYerushalmi’s dīwān, which contains short witty poems, riddles, and translations from Arabic.