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60 Arabic Script

60

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Aragon

Field-Marshal Baron Cosa, May 1, 1717, to two Jews residing in the suburbs, is, so far as is known, the oldest historical document containing information concerning the Jewish community In 1741 there lived in Arad there. Early History, only one Jew, named Mandel, who

did not develop Jewish poetry in Arabia, save a fewlines in one of Hariri'smakamas(xi.)and Ibn Ezra's poems. At the beginning of the fourteenth century there lived in Seville Musa B. Tubi, who wrote a philosophic poem styled " Al-Sab'iniyya " (poem of seventy verses), following the lines of Maimonidean argumentation. number of Jewish poets writing in Arabic lived in Spain but, unfortunately, hardly more than their

purchased the right to

A

sell,

at

first

and then liquors, under the protection of Colonel Horvath of the boundary guard. Other groceries,



names have come down. Among them are Moses ben Samuel ibn Gikatilla (eleventh century; see Poznanski, "Ibn Gikatilla," p. 23, Berlin, 1895); Abraham ibn Sahl (Seville, thirteenth century); Nasim

(Seville);

al-Israili

Abraham Alfakar

(thirteenth

century, Toledo); Ismail al-Yahudi and his daughAll of these wrote Muwashshah ter Kasmunah. poetry (Hartmann, "Das Arabische Strophengedicht," pp. 45, 63, 73, 74, 225, 244). kind of revival took place in Arabic-speaking countries at the end of the Middle Ages but the

A



poetry of this epoch is almost entirely Revival at of a liturgical character, and the Ianguage is not classical, but is modeled Close of Middle on the dialect of the country in which the Jews happened to live. Many of these are printed among the collections of piyyutim for Maghrebine and Eastern rites; but a comprehensive and critical study of them has yet to

Ages.

be undertaken. decades have come to light the of the Yemenian poet Shalom b. Joseph Shabbezi, who largely made use of the later forms of Arabic poetry, notably the " Muwashshah " (girdle rime).

Within the

last

,

poems

collections of

Bibliography Noldeke, Beitrct-ge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der Alien Araber, pp. 52-86 Delitzscli, Jlldiseh-Arab. Poesien aus Vormohamedanischer Zeit, 1874; Ihn Hisharn.,



passim Hirschfeld, Essai sur VHistoire des Juifs d.e Medine, in Revue Etudes Juives, vii. 167-193, x. 1031; idem, AssabHniyya with the Hebrew transl. by Solomon b. Immanuel Dapiere, edited and translated in Report of Montefriyre College, Ramsgate, 1894; idem, Contrilmtion to the Study of the Jewish-Arabic Dialect of the Maghreb, in Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1891, pp. 293-310 {Song idem, Jewish-Arabic Liturgies, in Jewish of Elijah) Quarterly Review, vi. 119-185, vii. 418-427. H. Hik.— G. g. ed. Wiistenfeld,



ARABIC SCRIPT. See Arabic Language. ARABIC VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE. See Bible Translations. 1. Son of Beriah in the genealogical list of Benjamin (I Chron. viii. 15). 2. A Canaanite city in the wilderness of Judah (Judges i. 16), against which the Jews fought sucLater it was incessfully (Num. xxi. 1, xxxiii. 40). habited by the Kenites (Judges i. 16). The site has been identified by Robinson with Tell Arad, south-

ARAD



east of Hebron. Buhl, Geographic des Alten Palttstina, pp. 96, 182 G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 277, 278.

Bibliography





j.

G. B. L.

jr.

ARAD

(ALT-ARAD) A royal free city and market town of Hungary, on the Maros, 145 miles southeast of Budapest. Among the Jewish communities of Hungary that of Arad holds a prominent

history begins in the first half of the eighteenth century. The passport issued by Lieut. place.

Its

Interior of the



Synagogue at Arad.

(From a photograph.)

Jews soon settled there. A- census taken in 1743 showed that six of them lived in their own houses. The congregation, together with its associated "Hebrah Kaddishah," was organized about this time. In 1754 there were 24 Jewish families residing in Arad among them Jacob Isaac, rabbi and teacher, with an annual salary of 36 florins. The year 1789 marks the turning-point in the history of the Arad community. In May of that year Aron Chorin entered upon his duties as rabbi of Aron the congregation. The whole history Chorin and of the community and its struggles,

Moses

successes, and its renown thenceforth center in him. With touching devotion and patriarchal sentiment he applied himself to its elevation, and organized most of the benevolent institutions that are its pride to-day. Another man who, with the rabbi, deserved well of its

Hirschl.

the congregation

was Moses

Hirschl,

who

for sev-

devoted his attention mainly to its educational interests. Together with the principal, Lazar Skreinka, he succeeded in raising the intellectual grade of the school to the satisfaction of the governmental authorities. Of especial importance, how-

eral decades

ever, for the true

development of the congregation

was the success attending Chorin's efforts the youths in the community to acquire

to induce

a knowl-