EJIW_Batch 2_1-145.indd

and lines of rhymed prose make it his longest work. *Ḥanukka-nāma (The Book of Hanukah), his other long narrative, is an account of the Maccabees’ successful military campaign against the Seleucid dynasty in the second century B.C.E. The extant manuscript copies are incomplete; in the introduction, however, Ben Samuel expresses his desire to continue in the tradition, begun by *Shāhīn in the fourteenth century and *ʾImrānī in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, of composing versified Judeo-Persian versions of biblical and other narratives. He was unaware that in 1524 ʿImrānī had in fact composed Ẓafarnāma (The Book of Victory), a versified rendering of the First Book of the Maccabees). Most of Ben Samuel’s Hebrew compositions were hymns (Heb. piyyutịm) emulating the style of the Jewish poets of medieval Spain. He also wrote a prose commentary on *Solomon ibn Gabirol’s liturgical poem *Shetẹr ʿAlay be-ʾEdim ve-Qinyan, traditionally read on the eve of the Day of Atonement, and a versified commentary to the introduction of the same author’s Azharot (Heb. Admonitions), hymns expounding the 613 positive and negative commandments.