Or 17047

Jewish pocket-sized calendar for 5689 Anno Mundi = 1928 - 1929 Common Era; by Hakham Ezra Dangoor. This may have been a draft in preparation for publication.

Folio 1r: Cover, including: invocations; the year, 5689 Anno Mundi; the location, Baghdad; a benediction from Psalm 35:2, the indicated letters of which equal the year-number and which allude to the author's name, Ezra; and the author's name.

Folio 1v: overall calendrical data for the year: sign (= day of week for 1st day of Rosh Hashanah / New Year; number of days in the 2 variable months; day of week for beginning of month Nisan & Passover); the year is intercalated (= it is a leap year, with a 13th month); position in the Sabbatical cycle, in the 300th 19-year cycle, and in the 204th 28-year cycle; number of years since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple; corresponding year in the Christian calendar, and when on the Jewish calendar the Christian year changes; corresponding year in the Islamic calendar, and when on the Jewish calendar the Islamic year changes; number of days in the year; number of weeks / Sabbaths in the year; & which Torah portions are doubled so that two are read on a single Sabbath.

Folio 2r: Table of Jewish historical events that serve as epochs, viz. beginnings of calendrical eras, plus one non-Jewish event used by Jews as an epoch. Apparently, it is in this sense that the Judeo-Arabic header 'תוואריך' / 'tawariḳ' should be understood in this context. Given for each event: [a] the year after the Creation when it occurred; and [b] how many years prior to the year of this calendar the event occurred.

Folio 2v: List of yahrzeits (dates of deaths) of some prominent figures, and dates of some important Jewish historical events, some sad and some joyous. The criteria for inclusion on the list are not obvious. The yahrzeits for the following three post-ancient figures are given: Moses Maimonides; Joseph Karo; and Theodor Herzl.

Bottom folio 2v - folio 4r: account of the rabbinate of Baghdad from the arrival of Rabbi Sadka Hussein from Aleppo (= Aram Tsova) – the year of his arrival is given here as 5538 AM = 1777/8 CE – through Hakham Ezra Dangoor’s own tenure as Hakham Bashi = chief rabbi, and its termination after approximately four years, viz. the end of [5]687 (autumn 1927), ‘at which time Baghdad was left without a chief rabbi, for amongst the Hahkamim there did not remain any who was fit who knew how to lead the community’.

Folios 4v - 17r: 2-page openings for each of the 13 Jewish months of this year. Information given in the headers: Zodiacal sign for the Jewish month; the day or two days of the week when the month begins; how many days are in the month; 'molad' (= mean conjunction of sun and moon) (including seconds) for the month's beginning; name of coinciding Islamic month; & Arabic and European names of the coinciding solar months. Below the headers, there is a table in which each day of the month is individually enumerated, providing the following information over four columns: column 1: the heading consists of the Arabic and European names of the solar month that coincides with the beginning of the Jewish month, with days-of-the-month enumerated beneath in Arabic numerals; column 2: the heading consists of the Jewish and Islamic names of the lunar month, with days-of-the-month enumerated beneath in Hebrew alpha-numeric notation; column 3: the heading consists of the work ‘Week’, with days of the week indicated below, Sunday through Friday indicated by the Hebrew alpha-numeric notation 1 – 6, and Shabbat = Sabbath = Saturday indicated by the Hebrew letter S / ש; column 4: any pertinent information about the day in question.

Folio 17v: Table of times for the three daily prayers, week by week, from the eve of Rosh Hashanah (Rosh Hashanah, viz. 1 Tishre, was Saturday = 15 September 1928) through the week of Torah portion Terumah (Saturday 6 Adar I = 16 February 1929).

Folio 19r-v: In a mix of Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, another table that seems to have the term 'תוואריך' / 'tawariḳ' in its title, this one giving the number of years from various momentous events (the establishing of the Jewish fixed calendar; the composing of various classical Jewish religious works; various technological advances and inventions) until the year of this calendar.

End.