Mirsad Sijarić, ed., The : History and Art. Facsimile edition with a commen- tary volume by Shalom Sabar. Sarajevo: The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2018. 304 pp., €92 (hardback)

In 1894, as the old story goes, the young Joseph Cohen of Kalman Bland’s important study The Artless Jew, of Sarajevo approached various Jewish communal which is listed only as a reference.3 Chapter 2 includes institutions, attempting to sell a valuable illuminated a brief survey of Iberian Jewish book art, starting with a manuscript of the Haggadah. The book description of the decoration schemes of Bibles, which was eventually acquired by the National Museum of tend to give preference to abstract decoration. Only Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it is still kept today. two out of approximately 120 decorated Bibles also Soon thereafter, in 1898, the manuscript was pub- display figural motifs. This is followed by a detailed lished by the art historian Julius von Schlosser and section that presents the evolution of the Haggadah the “Orientalist” David Heinrich Müller, both of whom as a liturgical text, the development of the illustrated worked at the University of Vienna. David Kaufmann, Haggadah in the fourteenth century in Ashkenaz (by a well-known Wissenschaft des Judentums scholar and which the author means both the German Lands and a collector of Hebrew manuscripts who worked in northern France), Iberia, and Italy, and an introduction , contributed a chapter on Jewish book art. to the main themes of Haggadah illustration. Sabar The volume presented initial results, attributing the then points to some basic differences in the visual lan- manuscript to “Spain” and dating it to the fourteenth guage of Ashkenazi and Iberian Haggadot, focusing on century. More importantly, it opened the way for fur- the Birds’ Head Haggadah (Jerusalem, Israel Museum, ther questions, many of which remain unanswered.1 MS 180/57) and British Library Add. MS 14761, a manu- Recently, the Sarajevo Haggadah, as this manuscript script commonly, but somewhat misleadingly, referred subsequently came to be known, was inscribed on the to as the “ Haggadah.” The latter does not UNESCO Memory of the World Register. To celebrate belong to the most famed group of Iberian Haggadot, this occasion, the National Museum of Bosnia and namely those displaying a full-fledged picture cycle Herzegovina issued a handsome new facsimile edition with biblical illustrations. Among those, the Sarajevo edited by Mirsad Sijarić together with a commentary Haggadah contains the longest, most detailed cycle. volume by Shalom Sabar. Presented to the reader in a The chapter terminates with a list of fourteen Haggadot handy two-volume case, the edition is affordable not to help the reader contextualize the Sarajevo Haggadah only for the specialist, but for any bibliophile with a within the framework of Iberian Jewish book culture. special interest in Jewish book art. It follows several Chapter 3 introduces the Sarajevo Haggadah specifi- earlier editions, among them one published several cally. It offers a careful and long-awaited description of times during the 1960s accompanied by a commen- the manuscript’s codicology and its physical condition; tary by Cecil Roth, and another version that had been a brief discussion of the textual variants; and a short edited by Eugene Werber and printed repeatedly since section about the script. The manuscript itself consists the early 1980s.2 of three sections: the biblical image cycle; the text of The commentary volume, authored by Shalom the Haggadah to be read on the eve of Passover; and the Sabar, opens with a general introduction to Jewish book piyyut section: as do numerous other Iberian Haggadot, art with a special focus on the “place of the Hebrew the Sarajevo Haggadah includes more than fifty folios book and its illumination in Medieval Spain” (11). The of piyyutim (liturgical hymns) and other liturgical texts brief discussion relies on famous statements made by to be recited during the Passover week. As Sabar notes, such scholars as Solomon Ibn Tibbon, Maimonides, and it is apparent from its physical condition that the latter Profiat Duran. Some readers will miss here a discussion section was less used than the part that contains the

1 Julius von Schlosser and David H. Müller, eds., Die Sarajewo- 3 Kalman Bland, The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirma- Haggada: Eine spanisch-jüdische Bilderhandschrift des Mittelalters tions and Denials of the Visual (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1898). Press, 2000). 2 Cecil Roth, ed., The Sarajevo Haggadah (London: W. H. Allen, 1963); Eugen Werber, The Sarajevo Haggadah (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1983).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 IMAGES Also available online—brill.com/ima DOI:10.1163/18718000-12340107 208 BOOK REVIEWs

Haggadah, which may have served the owners of the fully agree upon. A careful reader will miss here also book well into the nineteenth century. The liturgical a reference to Pamela Patton’s work on one of these section on the other hand had apparently gone out of motifs looked at in the Jewish–Christian polemical use much earlier. Its pages appear thus “brighter and dialogue.5 Chapter 6 discusses the ritual scenes by cleaner,” an observation that led Eugene Werber to using the question of whether or not they reflect surmise that it was added decades later. Sabar rightly contemporaneous practices. A whole section deals and convincingly suggests that the difference is due with communal aspects apparent in the distribution to the use of the book and that the third section had of matsot and haroset (133–135).6 always belonged to the book as it is now bound. This Several sections discuss to what extent the images chapter also discusses the color palette and painting in the Sarajevo Haggadah represent realia. This is the techniques; two artists were at work, one for the bibli- most original and the most successful part of this cal cycle and one for the miniatures in the text section. volume. Sabar opens with a cautious statement about This chapter finishes with a discussion about histori- the methodological difficulties associated with seeking ography, surveying earlier opinions about the date of elements of daily life in medieval images, especially the manuscript. Early scholarship often assumed that those with biblical content. He continues with some Jewish art stylistically and technically lagged behind observations about a surprisingly accurate depiction of Christian art, and suggested a date in the second half of some plants in contrast to some disappointingly naïve the fourteenth century for its creation. Recent scholars, representations of camels. Animals familiar from the this reviewer included, do not exclude an earlier date Iberian environment of the artist are drawn fairly real- prior to 1350. Yet even more vexing is the question of istically. Particular attention is given to the costumes location, which is largely left open by Sabar, who sug- worn by the biblical protagonists, all reflecting clothing gests that the manuscript may have come from some norms common in fourteenth-century Aragon. Sabar is place in the northeastern part of the Crown of Aragon.4 careful not to fall into the trap of making far-reaching What follows in Chapter 4 is a detailed and inter- conclusions from the images about daily practices and esting account of the history of the book from its clothing norms, and simply states where such norms production in fourteenth-century Aragon via the expul- are reflected and where they can be verified against sions of the Jews from Iberia in 1492 and 1496, through the background of what we know of them. The chapter a sale’s inscription that was added to it in Italy in 1510, concludes with descriptions of other aspects of daily to early-sixteenth-century notes made by a censor. In life: the clothing of children and women; education; 1894, the volume emerged in Sarajevo and found its professional life; life events such as weddings and buri- way to the Museum. During the Nazi occupation, it als; and synagogue furniture. Puzzling, at least in this was saved from confiscation by the Museum’s librarian reviewer’s eyes, is the reference to Islamicate style as Dervis Korkut and hidden in some unknown place. A “Moorish” (176), a vexed term that was often criticized similar scenario took place during the and that is certainly outdated by now. between 1992 and 1995. Chapter 7–9 contains a detailed description of the Chapter 5 discusses the biblical cycle and offers miniatures one by one. a good and concise overview of the current state of All in all, the editor and the author have to be research. Beginning with the two creation panels that congratulated on the publication of a handsome vol- in the past drew much scholarly attention, the text ume coming along with a commentary that presents moves on to the midrashic elements in the imagery a well-written, detailed, and balanced state of the without, however, attending to the question of why question section outlining in detail previous research the Midrash mattered, an issue that scholars do not on the Haggadah.

4 Sabar refers here to my own Illuminated Haggadot from Me- 5 Pamela Patton, “Cain’s Blade and the Question of Midrashic dieval Spain: Biblical Imagery and the Passover Holiday (University Sources in Medieval Spanish Art,” in Church, State, Vellum and Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2006), chap. 1 claiming that Stone: Essays in Honor of John Williams, ed. Julie Harris and Therese I attributed the entire group of illustrated Haggadot to Aragon, Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 423–451. which is not the case: I attributed to Aragon a smaller group of 6 On these, see also Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Another Look at the Haggadot, both illustrated and non-illustrated, that share several Illustrated Sephardic Haggadot: Communal and Social Aspects of textual features with one another. the Passover Holiday,” in Temps i espais de la Girona Jueva, ed. Silvia Planas Marcé (Girona: Patronat Call de Girona, 2011), 81–102.