Or 17046

Hakham Ezra Reuben Dangoor's monograph on the fixed Jewish calendar, its coordination with other calendars, and ancillary information. Contains prose and tables.

(Folio 1r): Ownership: poem declaring ownership of the book.

(Folio 1v): Scope and Content: Beginning with the words seder ‘ibur ha-shanim / סדר עיבור השנים = ‘the order of the fixed calendar of the years’, which are written in large, square script, and may be the work’s title, Hakham Ezra Reuben Dangoor (= HED) gives, in rhyme, an overview of the book’s scope and content. The book covers the Jewish calendar from the year 5647 Anno Mundi (= 1887/8 CE) to the end of the 6th millennium AM; and it provides the following information: molad (= mean conjunction of sun and moon), new moons, the two calculations of the changes of season, viz. that of Master Samuel, and that of Rav Ada, solar and lunar eclipses, as well as the Islamic months, months of Europe = the Gregorian calendar, those of the ‘Romans’ / רומיים, and those of the Greeks / יוונים. (Based on what follows, these last two categories, viz. Roman and Greek, seem to correspond to [a] the Julian calendar, and [b] the Ottoman fiscal calendar.)

(Folio 2r): Sources; Scope: Beginning with the words seder ha-‘ibur / סדר העיבור = ‘the order of the fixed calendar’, which also are written in large, square script, and may be the work’s title, in rhyme the author mentions the books upon which he draws:

Ḳehilat Ya‘aḳov / קהלת יעקב (congregation of Jacob), by Rabbi Jacob b. Jonah Mizraḥi (brother of Simeon - see next item) (According to Sassoon, written ca. 5447 AM / 1686/7 CE; preserved in Sassoon manuscript 243);

Kanfe Yonah / כנפי יונה (dove’s wings), by Rabbi Simeon / שמעון b. Jonah Mizraḥi (brother of Jacob - see previous item) (written in Baghdad (בגדאת), in the year 5451 AM (mnemonic תנו כבוד לתורה) = 1690/1 CE; preserved in Russian State Library, Moscow, manuscript Guenzburg 422 [scan available online], copied in Baghdad (בגדאת), in the year 5540 AM (mnemonic יש ת’ק’ו’ה’ לא’ח’רי’תך ושבו בני’ם לגבולם) = 1780/1);

Ohel Daṿid / אהל דוד (tent of David), by Rabbi David b. Ezekiel Raḥabi (1694-1771) (published Amsterdam, 1790/1);

Ḥazon la-Mo‘ed / חזון למועד (Vision for the appointed season), by Rabbi Israel David Margulies Jaffe Schlesinger (published Pressburg, 1843);

Ṿa-yiḳra Yitsḥaḳ / ויקרא יצחק (Isaac called) (unidentified).

(In fact, however, HED draws on other works, too, named where they are cited in subsequent chapters. These include Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah / משנה תורה = recapitulation of the Torah, Rabbi Hezikiah da Silva’s Peri Hadash / פרי חדש = new fruit, and Rabbi Daniel ha-Kohen's She’arit Yosef / שארית יוסף = Remnant of Joseph.)

Then he reiterates the book’s scope, as on the previous page, gives an invocation, his name, and the place and year of composition: Baghdad, 5647 Anno Mundi.

(Folios 2v – mid 4r): Introduction, covering the following topics:

It is a religious duty to carry out astronomical calculations relevant to the calendar; and it is this wisdom referred to in the verse ‘it is your wisdom and knowledge in the eyes of the nations’ (Deuteronomy 4:6). Hakham Dangoor cites this tradition in the name of ספ’ עברנות, conventionally but questionably transliterated into English as Sefer ‘Evronot, referring to a genre of books with a conventional but ever morphing text and set of illustrations on the fixed Jewish calendar (cf. Elisheva Carlebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe).

The Jewish tradition on length of month: it is precisely (lit. ‘nothing less than’) 29days, 12 hours, and 793/980 hour.

Basic methods of calendar calculation, and helpful mnemonics.

Lunar years: regular; and intercalated (i.e. leap years, with an added month).

Solar year; Master Samuel’s view that it is 365¼ days even.

Religious requirements necessitate coordination of lunar months and solar seasons, giving rise to the 19-year cycle, in which seven Jewish years – numbers 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 – have a 13th month.

According to Master Samuel, even after this coordination, there will be a discrepancy between the lunar and solar cycle.

Solar year; Rav Ada’s view that it is 356 days, 5 hours, 996 parts, and 48 fractions (each fraction = 1/76 of a part), leaving no discrepancy between the solar and lunar cycles.

The Great Cycle, of 28 years. As described in Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot [59b], at the spring equinox every 28 years, the sun [with other astral bodies] returns to the astral position that it occupied at the time of Creation. (See folio 79v = HED's page 157, where he records relevant liturgy.)

(Folios mid 4r – mid 6r): Chapter 1, covering the following topics:

The beginning-point (= epoch) of the counting of years ‘from the Creation’ (= the Anno Mundi era) is the hypothetical Tishre conjunction of sun and moon in the first year, at the eve of day 2 (= Monday); hour 5; & 204 parts. The mnemonic for this is 2;5;204, which, in Hebrew alpha-numeric notation is BaHaRaD / בהר”ד.

How to calculate from the epoch in order to find other calendar data.

Tables for adding [a] months and [b] 19-year cycles onto the epoch.

Table of the discrepancy (between the lunar and solar cycles) multiplied by the number of cycles.

Sample calculations.

(Folios mid 6r – 7r): Chapter 2, covering the following topic:

Under which circumstances the fixing of the day of Rosh Hashanah (= the beginning of the year) is deferred from when it would have been expected according to simple calculation.

(Folios 7v – 8v): Chapter 3, covering the following topic:

Once the day of Rosh Hashanah is known, how to work out the calendar for the rest of the year therefrom, for the various types of years. (On types of years, see the next chapter.)

(Folios 9r – 11r): Chapter 4, containing the following:

Tables set up by 19-year cycle, giving the following data for every year in cycles 298 – 316, covering years 5644 – 6000: year within the 19-year cycle; regular or intercalated (‘leap year’, viz. with 13 months); Anno Mundi year number; essential data from which everything else can be worked out, viz. [a] Rosh Hashana’s day-of-the-week, [b] whether both variable months will have 29 days, 30 days, or the first will have 29 and the second 30, and [c] the day-of-the-week of the New Moon of Nisan and Passover; and the mean conjunction (‘molad’) of that year’s month of Tishri.

(Folios 11v – 14r): Chapter 5, containing the following:

Tables and mnemonics for deriving all Jewish calendar details (holidays, fasts, beginnings of months, weekly Torah readings) from the data recorded in the tables of chapter 4.

(Folios 14v – 18v): Chapter 6, covering the following topics:

The changes of season; 2 views on the exact length of the (solar) year, and, in consequence, of the mean length of the seasons. Master Samuel’s view, that the year is exactly 356¼ days. Table for day-of-the-week and hour of season change over the 28-year ‘Great Cycle’, and eve of which day-of-the-week to begin request for rain. Table for day-of-Jewish-month of season change, over the 19-year cycle.

(Folios 19r – 22r): Chapter 7, covering the following:

The more accurate but less neat view of Rav Ada on the length of the year and, in consequence, of the mean (= average) length of the seasons. Tables to determine the increment of differentiation in determining the seasons.

(Folios 22v – 23v): Chapter 8, covering the following:

The Christian i.e. solar calendar, according to the old, Julian tradition. Epoch. Different traditions regarding which month begins the year. Different traditions as to the month names. Notes excursus beginning on folio 70v (= Hakham Dangoor’s page 139), where the Gregorian reform is discussed. Tables: [1] On which day-of-the-week the Julian months will begin, plotted onto the Jewish 28-year ‘Great Cycle’; [2] Approximately when in the Jewish month will the Julian month begin, plotted over the Jewish 19-year cycle. Device for determining the Christian year from the Jewish year.

(Folios 24r – 27r): Chapter 9, covering the following topics:

Natural phenomena coordinated with their dates on the solar calendar.

The Persian calendar (= the Jalali, Nowruz-e-Sultani calendar; cf. Encyclopaedia Iranica, ‘Calendars’). Day of new year; names of months; epoch for beginning of Persian era; method of finding Persian year from Anno Mundi year. In the main text the Persian New Year, Nowruz, is given as the 9th of the Month of March / Adar; and a marginal note indicates that from the year 1900 [the new year] begins on the 8th of that month.

Table giving dates of the sun’s entry into various zodiacal constellations and the equinoxes, length of day and night in Jerusalem, and in Baghdad. Added later at bottom of page (folio 25v = Hakham Dangoor’s p. 49): alternate table for Jerusalem covering fields comparable to above but ‘according to the months of Europe’, with different dates from the above table.

Table of mean motion of the sun along the zodiac per hour, day, days, etc.

Table, approximate day of Jewish month that sun will enter various constellations, over 19-year cycle.

Table of latitude and longitude of various cities, states, regions. The table presents 3 traditions for Jerusalem, and 2 for Baghdad. For both cities, one view is according to the book by Rabbi Joseph the Physician, who moved from Persia to Baghdad around the turn from the 18th to the 19th century. In the margin, Hakam Dangoor gives the sources for the various views on Jerusalem (some first mentioned in his list of sources, folio 2r): ‘The first line is according to Ḳehilat Ya‘aḳov, and the second line is according to the book by Rabbi Joseph the Physician’; and alongside the third view he writes, ‘according to the book Ohel Daṿid of blessed memory; and this is what is apparent from Maimonides’ chapter 11 of the "Laws of the Sanctification of the Moon”’. Below this, in different ink and presumably added later, Hakham Dangoor gives new, approximate values for Jerusalem and Baghdad, noting that, ‘thus is written in the precise tables of these times of ours; and thus did Lady Farha (= Flora) Suliman David Sassoon of ?? tell me’.

(Folios 27v – 45r): Chapter 10, covering the following topics:

This very extensive chapter presents both the Islamic calendar as well a much general astronomical and calendrical information:

Tables to coordinate between Jewish and Islamic calendars; a list of eras and how they coordinate with the Anno Mundi era; Table to convert minutes into parts of hours (at the rate of 1080 parts per hour); Table on measuring time via shadows, over the course of the year (unclear for which location); Tables on the orbits of the ‘seven wandering stars’ (viz. the seven luminous celestial bodies that have complex orbits, namely the sun and moon, and the 5 planets known in antiquity: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury); Table giving dates of the sun’s entry into various zodiacal constellations according to the month-calculation of the Christians, English (presumably: the Gregorian calendar; English month-names; cf. table added bottom f. 25v = HED’s p. 49). Discussion of ‘the nature of the zodiacal constellations, their power, and what they are called in’ Arabic. Discussion of the position of the moon and its visibility. Discussion of the wandering stars, and which one ‘rules’ astrologically. Table of which wandering star rules which hour of which day and of which night of the week. Table giving length of day and night in Jerusalem based on sun’s position in zodiac. Table (produced by HED) giving length of day ‘in our city Baghdad’ based on sun’s position in zodiac. Brief discussion of weather prognostication.

Folios 39v – 45r, continued on folios 72r – 79r: Tables and prose, 27 numbered steps plus additional unnumbered steps to work out various facets of the sun’s and moon’s mean and true positions, leading to the determination of lunar visibility in general, and specifically for the Land of Israel, and related phenomena.

(Folios 45v – 50v): Chapter 11: Introduction to solar and lunar eclipses. (Page written out-of-order: the beginning of the chapter is on 46a. The preceding page, folio 45v = Hakham Dangoor’s p. 89, belongs to this chapter: its content continues from folio 46v = HED’s page 91, second whole paragraph (beginning ‘ועתה’), as HED notes in both locations.)

(Folios 51r - 63v[? – it is unclear where this chapter ends]): Chapter 12:

Calculations to see whether there will be a solar eclipse, and if so, the details of the eclipse. Poem with overview of details for solar and lunar eclipses. Calculations to see whether there will be a lunar eclipse. Many tables: lunar and solar conjunctions and oppositions; adjusting from mean values to real values.

[Throughout, but particularly here, some of the tables are written in intricate geometric patterns characteristic of the Mudéjar style, used in medieval Iberia. This likely points to these tables’ ancestry in medieval Sephardic manuscripts.]

(Folios 64r – mid 71r): Almanacs, from various calendars and cultures:

64r – mid 68r: ‘THINGS THAT COME TO PASS IN THE WORLD, IF BLESSED GOD SO WILLS IT, according to the months of the Christians’ (= the solar calendar), beginning from March: European month name; Near Eastern month name; number of days in the month; and relevant items day-by-day, in a mix of Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew. Relevant items include astronomical (e.g. ‘spring equinox’), agricultural (e.g. ‘pomegranate blossom’), and societal (e.g. ‘Indic Festival of Nowruz’; ‘festival of the Christians’) data.

Mid 68r – mid 69r: Collected from various sources, prognostications, propensities, and pietistic practices determined by each year’s coincidence of Jewish calendrical elements (e.g. if Rosh Hashanah is on Monday, there will be cold and heat, the seeds will be good, much rain, the rivers will swell, sickness will overtake great (or: adult) people, there will be wrath and panic, and there will be satiety for the entire year’; ‘What is different about the days of Tishre from any other days? For in them He judges nations’; ‘If a child is born on the 5th or 7th of the month, he will be beloved unto the creatures’; ‘The reason that in a plain year [the Torah portions] Hukat and Balak are separate, while Matot and Mase‘e are joined, and not the reverse, is that we seek as much as possible to read, in the [time of year] between the distressing events, those portions in which the apportionment of the Land [of Israel unto the Tribes of Israel] is spelled out’; ‘To rectify the sin of …, in an intercalated year, in a month in which the mean conjunction of the month is 10 hours before the onset of the new month, if one fasts for eight hours prior to the mean conjunction …').

Mid 69r – mid 69v: Prognostications based on the 12-year Sino-Turkic animal cycle of the above-mentioned Persian Jalali, Nowruz-e-Sultani calendar.

Bottom 69v – top 70v: Prognostications based on which zodiacal sign rules the year, prefaced by the method for determining the ruling sign.

Top 71r: Combination of the Tetragrammaton for each month, and a related biblical verse in which that combination is spelled acrostically.

(Folios bottom 70v & bottom 71r): Excursus on the Gregorian calendar reform, its application, and its dissemination.

[Added quire: folios 72 – 81, in different paper (acidic, yellowing deeply).]

(Folios 72r – 79r): (as noted above under Chapter 10, these folios contain a continuation of the tables, prose, and steps for determining lunar visibility begun on folios 39v – 45r).

(Folio 79v): [1] Charm (from a work whose title is abbreviated תפ"ץ [which may stand forתפראת צבי or תפראת ציון]) for protection during cholera. [2] ‘Blessing over the Sun’, including a brief introduction, accompanying liturgy, and the text of the blessing. As described in Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 59b, this marks the return of the sun and other astral bodies, every 28 years, to the astral positions that they occupied at the time of Creation. On that basis, HED explains that this blessing is recited in the first year of the 28-year ‘Great Cycle’, at the spring equinox, 'which will occur on the eve of Wednesday (i.e Tuesday night going into Wednesday), in [the hour governed by] Saturn [viz. 6 PM]’. HED records this same blessing and accompanying liturgy in manuscript Or 17051, with small differences between the two records. Some of HED's glosses here bring the liturgy here closer to (but not into total identity with) the liturgy recorded there, implying that the main text here written before the text in Or 17051, then glossed in keeping with developments that were included there as part of the main text.

(Folios 80v – 81r [spread across the opening]): Table for the years Anno Mundi 5599 – 5670 (= 1838/9 - 1909/10 CE), giving fundamental data of the Jewish calendar – Anno Mundi year; plain or intercalated (leap); 3-letter sign giving day-of-week for Rosh Hashanah, number of days in the 2 variable months, day-of-week for beginning of Nisan and Passover; position in 19-year cycle; position in 28 year Great Cycle; & position in Sabbatical cycle – plus coordination with the Christian and Islamic calendars: which day of which Christian month corresponds to 1 Tishre; which Islamic month corresponds to Tishre; & what is the corresponding Islamic year.

[Added quire: folio 82 – end, in different paper (acidic, yellowing lightly).]

(Folios 82r – mid 92v): Excerpts from the work Ḥazon la-mo‘ed (mentioned in the list of sources, folio 2r), on the topics of the zodiac, the sun, and the moon.

(Folios mid 92v – 93v): Glossary of astronomical terms.

(Folio 94r – 97v): A poetic synopsis and elucidation of the entire order of the fixed Jewish calendar, from the work She’erit Yosef / שארית יוסף / ‘Remnant of Joseph’ [by Joseph son of Shem Tov son of Yeshua Hai / יוסף בן שם טוב בן ישועה חי; Late medieval(?), printed: Salonika, 5681 AM = 1920/1 CE].

(Folio 98r): Wheel laying out the 7 types of plain years and the 7 types of intercalated years coded to HED’s name, with an accompanying table for years 5663 – 5700 AM = 1902/3 - 1939/40 CE.

(Folio 99r-v): ‘Hafṭarah’ (= Liturgical reading from the Prophets, after the liturgical reading from the Torah, for Sabbaths and some special days): the concept and the etymology of the term. From the work Tiḳun Yiśśakhar, by Rabbi Yiśśakhar son of Mordechai Susan.

(Folio bottom 99v): mnemonics: how many call-ups to the Torah on various days on which the Torah is read publicly.

(Folios 100v – 101v): Tables giving the times of [1] dawn, [2] sunrise, and [3] the time for evening prayer over the course of the solar year. Location unspecified, but presumably Baghdad. (All of these times are relevant for the fulfilment of religious obligations.) The times are giving using the Ottoman ‘Turkish hour’ (alaturka saat) system, which combines the use of fixed / equal / mean / equinoctial hours with the following ‘seasonal’ variable: daily, at sunset at each locale, the next / new day begins. At that moment daily, all local clocks are reset to 12, regardless of where they were up to a moment earlier. (Cf. Avner Wishnitzer, ‘“Our Time:” On the Durability of the Alaturka Hour System in the Late Ottoman Empire’, Interational Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 16, Nos. 1&2, 2010, pp. 47 – 69; idem., Reading Clocks, Alla Turca: time and society in the late Ottoman Empire, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015; https://second.wiki/wiki/alaturka-uhrzeit (accessed 8 August 2022).)

(Folios 102r – 103r): Synopsis of Don Isaac Abravanel’s comment on Exodus 12:2, viz. the verse on the calendar, including ‘the beginning of the … year’: Is there an objective beginning point of the year, which recurs cyclically?

(Folios 103v – 104r [spread across the opening]): This table is similar but not identical to the one spread across the opening 80v – 81r. Both start with the year Anno Mundi 5599 (= 1838/9 CE), but this one runs through 5690 AM (= 1929/30) whereas that one runs only through 5670 (= 1909/10); both provide the same data for the Jewish calendar [the Anno Mundi year; plain or intercalated (leap); 3-letter sign giving day-of-week for Rosh Hashanah, number of days in the 2 variable months, day-of-week for beginning of Nisan and Passover; position in 19-year cycle; position in 28 year Great Cycle; & position in Sabbatical cycle]; but this table gives more data in coordination with various non-Jewish calendars, including: which day of which month on the 'Roman’ (= Christian, Julian) calendar (Using their Arabic names) corresponds to 1 Tishre; which day of which Jewish month corresponds to 1 January (Gregorian calendar, using the European name January); The Islamic month (which is lunar) corresponding to Tishri on the Jewish calendar; the Islamic year; date on the Jewish calendar that corresponds to New Year’s day of the Ottoman Fiscal Calendar (see Rose, Richard B. ‘The Ottoman Fiscal Calendar’. Review of Middle East Studies, Volume 25, Issue 2, December 1991, pp. 157 - 167), which is solar, and is also called the ‘Rumi’ = ‘Roman’ calendar, and which Hakham Ezra Dangoor calls the ‘Marathi’ or ‘Islamic-Marathi’ calendar; and the year on the just-noted calendar.

(Folios 104v – 105v): Table similar but not identical to the previous one. This one runs through 5692 AM = 1931/2. It omits some information given in the other tables. However, its primary innovation (despite some mix-ups) is that it supplements the previous table, filling in Gregorian information in the field where the previous table gave Julian information, and filling in Julian information where the previous calendar gave Gregorian information. Thus, this table gives the Gregorian date corresponding to 1 Tishre, whereas the previous table gave the Julian date; and when it comes to giving the Jewish date corresponding to 1 January, here 1 January is on the Julian calendar, whereas in the previous table 1 January was on the Gregorian calendar.

End.