Publisher's Synopsis
From the foreword by Menahem Ben-Sasson and Robert Brody: The Book of Testimonies and Legal Documents is one of a number of pioneering monographs on legal topics written in Judeo-Arabic by Se'adyah ben Joseph. The most elaborate and likely the last of these monographs, it was composed in Baghdad in 926, two years before the author was appointed Gaon (head of the academy) of Sura. Like most of the monographs composed by Se'adyah and several later Geonim, this work was virtually lost when the intellectual center of the Jewish world shifted to the European lands, in which knowledge of Arabic was very rare. For a millennium it was known only from occasional mentions or citations, or paraphrases in later rabbinic literature. Since the discovery of the Cairo Genizah at the end of the nineteenth century, a number of scholars have published fragments of the work. The current edition supersedes all of these publications and includes many previously unpublished fragments. We estimate that we have succeeded in reconstructing eighty-five to ninety percent of the entire work. Our edition includes an introduction, a critical apparatus and an annotated Hebrew translation.
