José Martínez-Delgado
Universidad de Granada
The Hebrew Word-Lore and the Judeo-Arabic Lexicography in al-Andalus (10th-15th Centuries)
The study of the Hebrew language reached a high level of development in the Middle Ages, especially in al-Andalus, where the bases of the methodology used to date were established. Jewish lexicographers in al-Andalus sought, above all, to find the tools to know and interpret – only and exclusively – the Scriptures. It seems that the final objective was to make it easier to approach the original text. The dictionary authors were obsessed with morphological information – synonymous with reliability – even at times leaving the semantic information to the side. But like all techniques, it was developed and perfected with the passage of time. Lexicography became the theory to be applied in order to produce rational exegesis (tafsīr). The talk identifies six large blocks or basic periods in the history of Hebrew lexicography in al-Andalus.
José Martínez Delgado is Associate Professor at the Department of Semitic studies in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Granada where he began to teach Classical Hebrew grammar in 2005. His research is focused on the grammatical and lexicographical Judeo-Arabic production and the linguistic thinking of the Jews of Al-andalus. Among his recent publications highlight "Risālat al-Tanbīh by Ibn Ganāḥ: an Edition, Translation and Study", Jerusalem studies in Arabic and Islam (2016), "Fragments of Šelomo ben Mobārak's Kitāb al-Taysīr in the Taylor-Schechter Collection", Qinzei Qedem (2015), "Fragment of a Judaeo-Arabic treatise on Andalusi Hebrew metrics (‛Ilm al-‛Arūḍ)", Journal of Semitic Studies (2015), and "An Anonymous Book on Hebrew Verbs in Judeo-Arabic", Revue des Études Juives, (2014).