Abstract
Benjamin ben ʻAnav of Rome's (c. 1215-c. 1295) rhymed prose narrative Masa' gei
ḥizayon (Pronouncement of the Valley of Vision) has been described as a "moral
discourse disparaging ostentatious wealth" and as reflective of the social reality
of Roman Jewry in the author's day. The prose of Masa' gei ḥizayon is of a high
quality and saturated with clever plays on biblical and rabbinic quotations, even
if it dims in comparison with the brilliance of Immanuel of Rome's writing later
in the century. Dan Pagis compares the work's rhymed prose with the Iberian
Hebrew rhymed prose tradition, with roots reaching back to the Arabic maqāma.
Iberian forms certainly became well ensconced on the Italian Peninsula later in
the century, as is evident in the Maḥbarot of Immanuel, and, as I suggest below,
Benjamin was familiar with the Mivḥar ha-peninim (Choice of Pearls) of Solomon
Ibn Gabirol. Yet, apart from a short introductory poem not written in quantitative
meter, Benjamin's narrative contains no verse, and the narrative development is
hardly akin to what one might expect in the maqāma literature. Rhymed prose had
already been utilized in Hebrew on the Italian Peninsula in the eleventh-century
Megilat Aḥimaʻaṣ, and thus the ultimate inspiration for the adoption of rhyme in
the work remains uncertain.