The untold stories of Hebrew manuscripts smuggled out of Syria

This narrative can be traced back to summarised press reports in the magazine "Al-Masra" published by the Pauline monks of Harissa: "On February 20(1938 AD), the news broke that a very valuable copy of the Torah had been stolen from the 'Hosh Al-Basha' synagogue in Damascus."

Newspaper accounts described it as a nine-century-old manuscript written in golden ink on deer parchment.

They also mentioned a similar copy in Aleppo that had been stolen during the previous great war (1914-1918 AD) but was now in the possession of Sassoon — an Englishman famous for his wealth. It was said that Sassoon had been offered 50,000 pounds for the manuscript, but he refused to sell it.

Newspapers reported that the value of the recently stolen copy from Damascus was estimated at 1,500 gold pounds, although exaggerated claims of its worth reached as high as one million pounds. In any case, an investigation into this theft was underway with at full speed.

This manuscript remained in the possession of David Sassoon's descendants until they sold it to the British Railways Pension Fund in 1978 through the "Sotheby's" Auction House in Zurich.

It was subsequently displayed once at the British Museum in 1982 before falling into the hands of investor Jackie Safra in 1989, who paid more than £2million to a dealer who bought it from "Sotheby's" that same year.

Enigmatic mystical powers

The obsession with collecting manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible can be traced to the fact that there is no complete or incomplete text of the "Torah" in Jewish records that dates back over a millennium, despite "reports" about the antiquity of the Jewish religion and its primacy. 

This leads to an ongoing state of scepticism among many researchers and academics who adhere to the principles of "Textual Criticism," causing them to constantly question the credibility of religious narratives, stories, and historical accounts found within the "Old Testament".

However, the obsession with collecting manuscripts has other reasons among the general believers. Eastern Jews believe that these scrolls have enigmatic mystical powers and that possessing even a small portion of these manuscripts can bring about good health and well-being to the holder.

Furthermore, some infertile women hold the belief that by simply gazing upon these documents, their aspirations of conceiving and becoming mothers will be fulfilled.

These manuscripts are annexed with statements like "Pages with the Lord are neither sold nor defiled," and "Cursed is he who steals, and cursed is he who sells," as a kind of continuation of the traditions of cursing that were known to many ancient peoples of the East.

Jewish communities in the east hold the belief that these manuscripts shield them from the risks of epidemics and natural calamities and that anyone who tampers with them would be cursed.

Aleppo manuscripts

It is remarkable that the overwhelming majority of these manuscripts were kept by the Jewish communities in Syria — especially Damascus and Aleppo. This is perhaps because of the long state of stability experienced by the Jewish communities in the two ancient cities. 

It is also because they became centres of attraction for the Jews of Andalusia (Sephardim) who carried their manuscripts with them when they were forced to flee their lost city after the Reconquista wars, which ended in 1492 AD. 

The Aleppo Codex is one of the earliest and most significant Hebrew manuscripts, along with Codex Sassoon No. 1053. It was created in Tiberias around 920 AD, during the Abbasid era, as shown in its margins.

Roughly a century after its creation, the Codex came under the possession of the Karaite Jews, a sect founded in Baghdad by Rabbi Anan ibn Dawood (715-795 AD) who was influenced by the ideas of the Muslim jurist Abu Hanifa al-Nu'man during their imprisonment on the orders of Caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansur.

The Aleppo Codex was discovered in the Karaites Synagogue in Jerusalem after the city was captured by the Crusaders in 1099. The Crusaders agreed to release Codex in exchange for a large ransom, which was paid by Egyptian Jewish financiers through the mediation of the Karaites of Askalan.

Consequently, it was transported to the Fustat Synagogue in Cairo where Rabbi Musa bin Maimon al-Andalusi. Al-Qurtubi (1135-1204 AD) examined it and confirmed its accuracy.

It is said that the codex was brought to Aleppo in 1375 AD by one of Maimonides' descendants. It remained there until 1947 when it vanished after riots caused the synagogue to be burned down.

However, more than 60% of its original text had been lost by the time it was rediscovered in Israel in 1958. Since then, efforts have succeeded in recovering only two additional papers.

It is worth noting that the Codex was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2015, following a legal dispute over ownership between the Jewish community of Aleppo and various Israeli institutions.

From a technical standpoint, the Leningrad Codex is a copy of the Aleppo Codex, in the city of Cairo in 1008 AD. Its significance stems from the fact that it is a linguistic and grammatical reference for the Tiberian school.

The codex contains Masoretic comments in the margins as well as several technical footnotes that delve into textual and linguistic details, many of which are illustrated with beautiful geometric shapes, and are copied on bound parchment.

The Codex Farhi, which Sassoon also acquired from Aleppo, is possibly his most valuable possession. It appears from its name that a member of the renowned Damascene Jewish family of Farhi owned this manuscript, which contains more than 359 illustrations inspired by the stories of the Torah.  

Its significance stems from the fact it contains rare drawings that Elisha Crescas made in southern France's Provence between 1366 and 1383. It is currently held in a Swiss bank. 

Damascus Crown and Rabbi Hamra

The smuggling of the "Damascus Crown" manuscript is the most recent example of a plot involving Hebrew Bible manuscripts. This process continues to cause controversy due to the involvement of the former Syrian rabbi Ibrahim Hamra (1943–2021), who was known for his connections with Syrian officials.

According to footnotes in the manuscript, the "Damascus Crown" was written in 1260 AD by Rabbi Menachem, son of Rabbi Ibrahim ibn Malik in the city of Borghosh (present-day Burgos, central Spain). It was transported to the Hosh Al-Basha Synagogue in Damascus with the arrival of the Jews of Andalusia to the Syrian capital at the beginning of the Ottoman era, hence its name.

In 1886, the Russian-Jewish historian and orientalist Abraham Harkavy (1835-1919) examined the manuscript during his visit to Damascus, recognizing its antiquity. Later, in 1919, the orientalist Abinam Yellen (1900-1937 also acknowledged its significance.

The manuscript was stolen from the Hosh Al-Basha Synagogue in 1940, only to be found again in 1962. It was smuggled out of Damascus in 1993 in a covert intelligence operation, as former Israeli Mossad head Abraham Halevy revealed in 2011. 

On that day, Halevy told the Israeli press that Rabbi Hamra "knew how to speak, and how to show respect to al-Assad, and this is what helped him smuggle the Jews and the books of the Torah."

"These operations were led and initiated by him, and our role was limited to helping him. We kept the Crown of Damascus in Israel, and it can be said that Hamra is one of the heroes of the Jews."

The Crown of Damascus manuscript appears to be only one of nine manuscripts that were secretly smuggled out of Syria between 1993 and 1995.

These manuscripts, written primarily in Andalusia between the 10th and 13th centuries AD, were sold to the Israeli National Library after being preserved for many centuries in the Hosh Al-Basha Synagogue.

The Crown of Damascus manuscript, made on parchment, has allegorical symbols and spelling notes on each of its 428 pages, measuring 350 x 270 mm.

It is written in Andalusian-Hebrew square script with three columns per page, with the exception of the books of Proverbs, Job, and Psalms, which are written in two columns per page.

The 24 main books of the Hebrew Bible are numbered in accordance with the Tiberian tradition of biblical codification. A page with bright illustrations and gold decorations is inserted between each section of the Bible.

Between the manuscripts and the Dead Sea scrolls

These are the oldest versions of the Hebrew that Jews call the Tanakh, Christians call the Old Testament, and Muslims call the Torah. No complete text older than these copies has been revealed.

It is worth mentioning that the translation of the Hebrew Bible into European languages is mostly taken from an ancient Greek translation called the "Septuagint" that originated in Egypt during the Ptolemaic rule, but even this translation lacks manuscript copies.

Separate versions of the Bible began to emerge with the discovery of the "Qumran Cave" scrolls near the Dead Sea in the late 19th century, most of which date back to the period between the 3rd century BC and the first century AD.

While some of the Qumran scrolls are more or less identical to the Masoretic text found in the Aleppo and Damascus manuscripts, some of the manuscripts of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave IV show significant differences in language and content.

These variations were utilised by proponents of the schools of "textual criticism" as an argument to reconsider all the scientifically accepted theories on the development of the modern written text based on three manuscript sources: the Masoretic text found in the Aleppo and Damascus manuscripts, the Greek Septuagint and the five Samaritan books of the Torah.

In general, 225 texts have been identified among the Dead Sea Scrolls so far, constituting around 22 percent of the total canonical Bible that is currently recognised.