Abū Saʿīd Hārūn "Aaron" ben Moshe, haSofer al-Tabari

Aaron Ben Asher (Abū Saʿīd Hārūn) lived and worked in Tiberias in the first half of the tenth century. He was the sixth and last member of the Ben Asher dynasty of masoretes (see Ben Asher, Moses). He is considered to have been the close and the most authoritative of the masoretes. His name is especially linked with two large literary projects:

(1) Sefer Diqduqe ha-Teʿamim, dealing with clear masora matters, such as special characters, qeri and ketiv, and lists of defective and full scripts in the Bible. Along these occur neighboring grammatical matters, such as the division of Hebrew letters (consonants) according to their utterance, the realization of the shewa, the realization of the b, g, d, k, p, t letters in proximity to ʾ, h, w, y, and the verbal tenses. Save for parts of the book which contain masora lists, most of it is written in a flowery, rhymed style. The first edition was published in 1879 by Baer and Strack. In 1957, Aron Dotan published a critical edition based on more reliable manuscripts, after a deep and ramified philological study, excluding later appendices (e.g., the list on parts of speech);

(2) The vocalization and addition of Masora to the famous Bible Codex, which Maimonides praised in later times saying: “The book which I relied upon in these things is the famous book containing the twenty-four books [the entire Bible], now in Egypt but years ago in Jerusalem, to correct the books in accordance with it. All relied on it, since Ben Asher corrected and worked it out meticulously for many years, and had proofread it many times in accordance with the Masora as if he himself wrote it, and I based myself on this manuscript in the Sefer Torah I wrote” (Mishne Torah, Hilkhot Sefer Torah 8:4–5).

The common opinion is that the codex Maimonides relied upon is the one known nowadays as the Aleppo Codex or just the Codex (Heb. Keter Aram Ṣova or just ha-Keter). In the fifteenth century Saʿadya ben David of Aden testified that the book on which Maimonides relied is “still today in the city of Ṣova [i.e., Aleppo] and is called al-Tāj [the Keter, i.e., the Crown, a nickname for the Torah].” Although many leaves are missing from the beginning and end of the codex, it is the oldest, most complete text of the Bible at our disposal. It is about fifty years older than the famous St. Petersburg B19a Codex finished in 1008, stemming from the same school. According to the dedicatory inscription, added some hundred years after its completion, the Aleppo Codex was written in Tiberias by the scribe Solomon ben Boyaʿa, whereas the vocalization, the cantillation marks, and the masora notes were added by Aaron Ben Asher. The codex was brought from Palestine to Egypt and later on to Syria, where it was kept in the synagogue of Aleppo for centuries. After the establishment of the State of Israel it was brought to Israel in a mysterious way and entrusted to President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Today it is housed at the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem.

Some serious questions are still unanswered: Was the Aleppo Codex indeed the one mentioned by Maimonides? Is the added colophon reliable? Was Aaron Ben Asher the person who made the corrections and added the vocalization and Masora notes? Was the person who added the Masora, whether Aaron Ben Asher or someone else, a Karaite or a Rabbanite?

Several scholars—Simha Pinsker (1860), Moses David Cassuto, Aron Dotan, Davis Shemuel Levninger, Geoffrey Khan, Mordechai Glatzer, Israel Yevin, Dominic Barthelemy, and Yossef Ofer, to name but a few— have expressed opinions on these issues. Raphael Zer (2003) holds that the masorete of the Aleppo Codex was indeed a Karaite, and even if he was identical with Aaron Ben Asher, Maimonides relied on him because what was important in his eyes was that Ben Asher was an expert in the field of Masora, for the biblical text had already been crystallized and canonized long before Karaism emerged by the time of ʿAnan ben David, around 750, so that the Karaites did not have a different version of the Bible, nor did they oppose the Rabbanites for Masora details. Even the dedication testimony does not state that Ben Asher himself was the scribe of the book, but rather that he added vocalization, cantillation marks, and Masora notes. At any rate, Maimonides relied on Ben Asher’s codex thoroughly, not only with regard to the “open” and “closed” portions, for which no tradition survived in the Talmud—and Maimonides was the first to set the rule in this matter based upon this codex—but also in the number of lines (67) of the Haʾazinu portion, against the talmudic rule prescribing seventy lines.

The Ben Asher Masora of the biblical text has been accepted to date, not only because it is the most accurate, but mainly because Maimonides canonized it. Even if the Aleppo Codex was not the one Maimonides used in correcting his own Torah scroll, it certainly follows the Ben Asher tradition, as is known from other Bible codices. It is also in accord in almost every single detail with the Ben Asher opinions brought in the Kitāb al-Khilaf (Book of Differences) by Mishael ben Uzziel and in other lists of “differences”.

In his generation, Ben Asher was not yet the unique authority. His contemporaneous masorete Moses ben Naphtali opposed him in many details. Yet they only differ in matters of vocalization or Masora marks, and were in total agreement with regard to the body of the text itself. Their differences are mentioned in the margins of Bible codices or in lists at the head or the end of the codices or in independent lists. Most of the lists are inaccurate, save for the one in the Kitāb al-Khilāf by Mishael ben Uzziel, who lived a few decades after Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali. According to Mishael, Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali differed in 867 places in the Bible. Beside the peculiarities of the Ben Asher tradition mentioned by Mishael, one feature might be recalled here, as it appears in the Aleppo Codex, the ḥataf ḥireq. In the Tiberian vocalization system, three types of ḥatafs are known: ḥataf qamaṣ, ḥataf pataḥ, and ḥataf seghol. Yet a few cases of ḥataf ḥireq are found in the Aleppo Codex (e.g. Psalms 14:1, 53:2).

The date of decease of Aaron Ben Asher is unknown, but according to an inscription he passed away before 989.

Aharon Maman

Bibliography

Baer, S. and Strack, H. L. (eds.). Die dikduke ha-teamim des Ahron ben Mosche Ben Ascher: und andere altegrammatisch-Masorethische Lehrstücke zur Feststellung eines richtigen Textesder hebräischen Bibel, mit Benutzung zahlreicher alter Handschriften zum ersten Male	 vollständ ig /hrsg (Leipzig: L. Fernau, 1879).

Dotan, Aron. Ben Asher’s Creed: A Study of the History of the Controversy, Masoretic Studies, no. 3 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press for Society of Biblical Literature and International Organization for Masoretic Studies, 1977).

———. The Diqduqé Hatteamim of Aharon ben Mose ben Asher (Jerusalem, 1967) [Hebrew].

——— . Thesaurus of the Tiberian Masora (Tel Aviv, 1977).

Ofer, Josef. “Keter Aram Ṣova—Toledot Ketav ha-Yad ve-Samkhuto,” in Keter Yerushalayim, Tanakh ha-Universita ha-ʿIvrit, ed. Mordechai Glatzer (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 17*–33*.

Yeivin, Israel. The Biblical Masora, Studies in Languages, vol. 3 (Jerusalem, 2003).

Zer, Rafael Isaac (Singer). “Was the Masorete of the Aleppo Codex of Rabbanite or Karaite Origin?”, Sefunot, n.s. 8, no. 23 (2003): 574–587 [Hebrew].

Cite this page

Aharon Maman. "Ben Asher, Aaron (Abū Saʿīd Hārūn) ben Moses." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2013. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>