R. Aharon al-Amani, a
rabbinic judge in the community of
Alexandria
in the 12th Century, has become especially well-known on account of
having merited the opportunity to host in his home R. Yehuda ha-Levi, when the
latter arrived in
Alexandria en route to
Palestine.
The poetic Diwan of Yehuda ha-Levi contains evidence of an exchange of
poems between himself and Aharon al-Amani. However, whereas a number of the
poems written by ha-Levi to R. Aharon have come down to us, only small
fragments of the secular poems of R. Aharon have survived. On the other hand,
the Cairo Genizah has preserved a significant number of his liturgical poems, selihot
for the most part, and these are published in the present volume.
The poems are
accompanied by an apparatus of variant readings and a commentary. In an
extensive introduction, the editor discusses the uniqueness of the poems of
al-Amani, discovering that despite the prestige enjoyed by Spanish Hebrew
poetry and the near-complete acceptance of the Spanish poetic forms, R. Aharon
did not internalize the new characteristics that pervade the Spanish selihot,
especially the personal characteristics bearing a philosophical stamp; his selihot
bear a national character, according to the eastern tradition.
