200 • chapter 5
Maimonides’s introduction to his mishnah commentary,^56 the Judeo-
arabic commentary on Pirkei avot attributed to Maimonides’s grandson
David ha- Nagid (published for the first time in alexandria in 1901),^57
and Gedalia ibn Yahya’s sixteenth- century Shalshelet ha- kabbalah.^58
In contrast to the works on which Moyal relied, his own text was
directed at a non- Jewish audience. “this is the fruit of my great labor,”
writes Moyal in his preface, “which I present to the speakers of ara-
bic.” the “speakers of arabic” (an- nāṭiqīn bi- ḍ- ḍād) whom Moyal had
in mind were not other Jews, like himself, who spoke arabic natively.
after all, Moyal explains that the underlying aim of the work is “to
remove misunderstanding between them” (that is, arabic- speakers)
and “the most ancient race among them, namely the Israelite race,
the source of the prophets.”^59 the categories here (“arabic- speakers”
and “the israelite race”) are interestingly ambiguous— mutually ex-
clusive in one phrase, overlapping in the next. the “them” of “mis-
understanding between them” appears to refer exclusively to non-
Jewish arabic speakers, whereas the “them” of “the most ancient race
among them” appears to include Jews (at least arabic- speaking ones)
within the broader category of an- nāṭiqīn bi- ḍ- ḍād. regardless of this
ambiguity,^60 it is clear that the readers Moyal wished to reach were
non- Jewish arabic- readers, whom the book was meant to disabuse of
(^56) Moyal’s version of this text would seem to be a translation back into arabic from
the hebrew translation of Judah ben Solomon al- harizi. in any case, it is different from
the arabic version edited by Kafah. cf., for instance, Mūyāl, at- Talmūd, 54– 57, to Mai-
monides, Zeraʿim, 29– 31.
(^57) Maimuni, Pirkei avot. Scholars have challenged the attribution of this text to David
ha- Nagid on both stylistic and paleographic grounds. See Fenton, “the Literary Legacy of
David Ben Joshua, Last of the Maimonidean Negidim,” 13– 14n.23. i am grateful to elisha
russ- Fishbane for directing me toward this scholarship.
(^58) On the “resurgence of Jewish historical writing in the sixteenth century,” including
Shalshelet ha- kabbalah, see Yerushalmi, 57– 75.
(^59) Mūyāl, at- Talmūd: Aṣluhu wa- tasalsuluhu wa- ādābuhu, 3.
(^60) Levy offers a somewhat different reading of Moyal’s formulation here, highlighting
Moyal’s presumption that the relationship between arabic- speakers and Jews was one
“not between two different peoples, but between the whole and one of its parts or ele-
ments [ʿanāṣir].” Levy concludes that “even as Moyal emphasizes and defends his own
Jewishness, he deliberately naturalizes Jewish identity into a history of arabness, describ-
ing Israelites [al- ʿunṣur al- isrāʾīlī] as the oldest strain, element or race [aqdam ʿanāṣirhim
ʿahadan] of arabic speakers.” My reading suggests that, for Moyal, the relationship was
more ambiguous. Levy, “Jewish Writers in the arab east,” 207– 8, 205n.162, 216n.179.
this terminological ambiguity may be considered in the context of recent scholarly dis-
cussions of the “arab Jew.” See, e.g., Shenhav, The Arab Jews; Gottreich, “historicizing
the concept of arab Jews in the Maghrib,” 433– 51; Levy, “historicizing the concept of
arab Jews in the Mashriq,” 452– 69; Levy, “Mihu yehudi ʿarvi?”