Hidden Gems

Unlike the Hebrew maqāma from Iberia, the Hebrew maqāma from Yemen has received little attention. This article brings the reader into the world of the Yemeni Hebrew maqāma between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries with such works as Aluʾel’s “Dispute Between the Calf and the Slaughterer,” the seemingly related “Parable of the Rooster,” “Haman’s Epistle,” al-Ḍāhirī’s Sefer ha-musar (roughly, “Book of adab ”), Ḥarazi’s “Paths of Faith,” and Manṣura’s “Book of Thought.” Al-Ḍāhirī’s monumental work, for example, builds on diverse sources such as the maqāmāt of al-Hamaḏānī and al-Ḥarīrī, al-Ḥarīzī’s Taḥkemoni , and Immanuel of Rome’s Maḥberot and, like other maqāma collections, reworks many existing genres (folk tales, homilies, poems, letters, riddles, travelogues, dialogues, debates, and mystical writings). As such, it is a poignant testimony to Jewish intellectual culture in Yemen writ large

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