The Judeo-Persian Poet Emrani and His "Book of Treasure": Emrani's Ganj-name, a Versified Commentary on the Mishnaic Tractate Abot.

• Author: Paper, Herbert H.

This is an excellent contribution to Judeo-Persian studies, a vastly interesting and important part of the field of Jewish languages in which, unfortunately, there are too few scholars at work. At the outset, I must confess to a certain positive bias in writing this review. Some years ago, when I met the author and he told me of his interest and work on this text, I gave him my own completed collation of three manuscripts in Israel of this particular poetic work. He acknowledged this in the book with thanks and then added three other manuscript versions to his final published text.

Emrani, the second-greatest Judeo-Persian poet (fifteenth-sixteenth century) after Shahin (thirteenth-fourteenth century) was a prolific writer on various Jewish themes. Poetry is, after all, widely known as the prime literary medium in the long tradition of classical Persian literature. The Ganj-name is a retelling in just over 2,000 rhyming couplets of the teachings in the Mishnaic tractate Abot that is also widely known as "the ethics of the fathers." Yeroushalmi has written a very detailed and informative set of chapters on Emrani's life, on the history of Jews in Iran at the time, and on the poet's various works. He then provides the background of Abot and its structure in this long poem, as well as an analysis of the poem's literary aspects. This is followed by the heart of the book, an English translation with each section and couplet numbered consecutively. There are also full explanatory footnotes to the translation. The final section of the book is the Judeo-Persian text itself with critical apparatus where word- and...