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Zechariah (Yaḥya) al-Ḍāhirī ((ヘブライ語:זכריה אלצ'אהרי), ; often spelled Zechariah al-Dhahiri ((アラビア語:يحيى الضاهري)); the son of Saʻīd (Saʻadia) al-Ḍāhirī, from Kawkaban, in the District of al-Mahwit, Yemen,〔Amram Qorah, ''Saʻarath Teiman'', Jerusalem 1987, p. 5〕 a place north-west of Sana’a, b. ''circa'' 1531 – d. 1608) was a Yemenite Jewish poet and rabbinic scholar of the 16th century who left Yemen in search of a better livelihood and who traveled to Calicut and Cochin in India, Hormuz in Persia, Basra and Irbīl in Babylonia, Bursa and Istanbul in Turkey, Rome in Italy, Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, Safed and Tiberius, as well as Jerusalem and Hebron in the Land of Israel, Sidon in Lebanon and Egypt, and finally unto Abyssinia where he returned to Yemen by crossing the Erythraean Sea and alighting at a port city near Mocha, Yemen. He wrote extensively about his travels and experiences in these places, publishing them in a book which he called, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (The Book of Moral Instruction). The book is one of the finest examples of Hebrew literary genius ever written in Yemen, its author making use of a poetic genre known as ''maqāma'',〔Called also ''maḥbereth'', or “word synthesis,” in the Yemenite Hebrew vernacular. ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'', in the local parlance spoken in Yemen, was called ''maḥberoth'' (the plural form of ''maḥbereth'').〕 a prosimetric literary genre of rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous, to describe his journeys. Al-Ḍāhirī, who is clearly very adept in the Hebrew tongue, admits to having modeled his own poetry – two-hundred and seventy-five of which poems are found in his ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' and in his ''Sefer Haʻanaḳ'' – on the Hebrew work ''Taḥkemoni'' of Alḥarizi, who, in turn, was influenced by the Arabic ''maqāmāt'' of al-Ḥarīrī.〔Adena Tanenbaum, ''Kabbalah in a literary key: Mystical motifs in Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī’s Sefer Hamūsar'', Ohio State University, Brill Co. Leiden 2009, p. 1; ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Introduction, Benei Baraq 2008, p. 14〕 His vivid descriptions of the town Safed and of Rabbi Joseph Karo’s ''yeshiva'' are of primary importance to historians, seeing that they are a first-hand account of these places, and the only extant account which describes the ''yeshiva'' of the great Sephardic Rabbi, Joseph Karo.〔Adena Tanenbaum, ''Didacticism or Literary Legerdemain? Philosophical and Ethical Themes in Zechariah Aldahiri's Sefer Hamusar'', in ''Adaptations and Innovations: Studies on the Interaction between Jewish and Islamic Thought and Literature from the Early Middle Ages to the Late Twentieth Century, Dedicated to Professor Joel L. Kraemer'', ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann and Josef Stern (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2008), pp. 355-79〕 With his broad Jewish education and his exceptional skills in his use of the Hebrew language, Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī is an important source in the study of Jewish history in the Land of Israel during the Renaissance and of Jewish persecution in Yemen at that time. ==Early life and travels== Little is known of the author’s early life, other than the fact that he was an Israelite, descended from the Tribe of Reuben.〔Zechariah Al-Dhahiri, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Chapter Twenty-five, Benei Barak 2008 (Hebrew), p. 163. This is one of the more extraordinary anecdotes, since the king’s Minister and Prince, Aharon Iraqi Ha-Kohen, had not yet burnt the family registers of the Jews in Yemen, and he recalled on this one page his family’s pedigree.〕 Al-Ḍāhirī spent at least ten years in his travels away from his native Yemen, where he had left behind a wife and children. He writes of himself that he married a second wife in Cochin (India), being a place of Jewish converts,〔Al-Dhahiri, Zechariah. ''Sefer Ha-Musar'' (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Bnei Barak 2008, p. 67 (Hebrew). This view is supported by Rabbi Yehezkel Rachbi of Cochin who, in a letter addressed to Tobias Boas of Amsterdam in 1768, wrote: "We are called 'White Jews,' being people who have come from the Holy Land, (may it be built and established quickly, even in our days), while the Jews that are called 'Black' they became such in Malabar from proselytization and emancipation. However, their status and their rule of law, as well as their prayer, are just as ours." See: (''Sefunot'', Book One (article: "Sources for the History on the Relations Between the White and Black Jews of Cochin") ), p. רמט, but in PDF p. 271 (Hebrew)〕 whom he later divorced because of her old age and lack of upper-teeth.〔Zechariah Al-Dhahiri, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'', Introduction (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Chapter Eight, Benei Barak 2008 (Hebrew), pp. 67–71.〕 He then travelled to Persia where he took another wife in marriage, which wife bare him twin sons, Joshua and Caleb, but after one year, his young bride died. It was at this time that he decided to leave Persia, leaving his two sons with his brother-in-law, and, presumably, continuing with his travels until eventually he returned home to his family in Yemen.〔Zechariah Al-Dhahiri, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Chapter Sixteen, Benei Barak 2008 (Hebrew), pp. 105–106.〕 After a stint in Yemen where he and the Jewish community were imprisoned, he eventually returned to visit his sons in Persia, and found them doing well, although his brother-in-law had by that time died. The author, while writing about his journeys and experiences, cleverly conceals his own identity while narrating his experiences, and describes the experiences of two men in their journey, the two chief protagonists of his travel narrative: Mordechai Haṣidonī and his old crony, Abner ben Ḥeleḳ the Yemenite, which men are, in fact, the author himself.〔Zechariah Al-Dhahiri, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'', Introduction (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari) Benei Barak 2008 (Hebrew), p. 14.〕 Some scholars had originally thought that the book was largely fictional because of this anomaly. However, modern Israeli scholars now agree that the author was referring to himself in concealed terms (his ''alter ego''), just as he says explicitly about himself in the Introduction to his book, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar''. The numerical value of these two names (in Hebrew) is equal to his own real name. This remarkable literary work interweaves folktales, animal fables, riddles, poems, epistles, and travel accounts with pious admonitions, religious polemics, messianic speculations, and philosophical disquisitions in a most engaging fashion.〔Adena Tanenbaum, ''Kabbalah in a literary key: Mystical motifs in Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī’s Sefer Hamūsar'', Ohio State University, Brill Co. Leiden 2009, p. 1〕 It is not uncommon for al-Ḍāhirī to repeat episodes of his travel narrative, or some important event which happened to the Jewish community of Yemen, in more than one of the book’s forty-five chapters. Perhaps the book’s most important contribution to historians is in al-Ḍāhirī’s description of the Jewish communities in Safed and in Tiberius, during the mid-16th century, as well as a description of Jewish persecution in Yemen during the same century, under the Zaydī imamate. Modern archaeologists are grateful to Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī and credit him with giving a precise description of the location of Tiberias in the 16th century, whose city’s walls adjoined the Sea of Galilee. Al-Ḍāhirī’s description of Tiberius during that period conforms with that of another writer, ''viz''., that of Rabbi Hayyim ben Joseph Vital, who also described the city’s walls.〔Yosef Stefansky, Archaeologist, ''Safed and Tiberius in Rabbi Zechariah al-Dhahiri’s Sefer Ha-Mūsar''〕 Al-Ḍāhirī is accredited with bringing the Shulchan Aruch to Yemen, as well as ''kabbalistic'' books, among other works, which he sold in Yemen at their face value. Other books, he recalls, had been lost at sea. Upon Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī’s return to Yemen in 1568, during the Turkish-Yemeni wars, al-Ḍāhirī was imprisoned in Sana’a, along with other principal persons of the Jewish community, for a period of one year in earnest by the lame theocratic ruler, al-Imām al-Mutahhar b. al-Mutawakkil Yaḥya Sharaf ad-Din, who allegedly suspected them of collaborating with the enemy.〔Zechariah Al-Dhahiri, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'', Introduction (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari) Benei Barak 2008 (Hebrew), p. 13〕 Al-Ḍāhirī, writing about this experience, says that he saw his own suffering as God’s way of punishing him for his having left the Land of Israel and returning to Yemen.〔''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (ed. Yehuda Ratzaby), Chapter Twenty-five, Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem 1965 (Hebrew), pp. 287-288; ibid. (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Benei Baraq 2008 (Hebrew), p. 162〕 It was during this time that he began to write his momentous work, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' – a record of his travel experiences, at the age of thirty-seven, although it was completed several decades later.〔Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'', Introduction (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari) Benei Barak 2008, p. 13, note 1.〕 After the community’s release from prison, the lame king still kept a firm grip upon his Jewish subjects, scattering them in different places throughout the country where they were kept under close-surveillance while working in the many towers built in that country.〔Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Chapter Forty-five, Benei Barak 2008, p. 272.〕 This close-surveillance continued unabated until the king’s death in 1573.〔Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Chapter Twelve, Benei Barak 2008, p. 88.〕 After the king’s death, the Jews of Yemen were released from their incarceration by the succeeding ruler, who had borne a grudge against the former king and had destroyed his heirs to the throne. It was during this confinement to the towers (between 1569-1573) that Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī also completed another momentous work, which he composed mainly in the late hours of the night, viz., the book, ''Ṣeidah la’derekh'' (Victuals for the Road),〔''Ṣeidah la’derekh'', published in ''Taj – Pentateuch'', 2 volumes, Hasid Publishers, Jerusalem 1991 (Hebrew)〕 being a commentary on the Pentateuch where he interweaves ''kabbalistic'' themes and philosophy drawn from the ''Zohar'', Rabbi Saadia Gaon, Maimonides’ ''Guide for the Perplexed'', Yosef Albo’s ''Sefer Ha`iqarim'' and Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla’s ''Sha'are Orah''. He mentions that during the period of this book’s compilation, he and his family were not permitted to leave the tower except with prior consent of his overseers.〔Yehuda Ratzaby, ''Torathan shelivnei Teiman'' (the Torah of the Sons of Yemen), Kiryat Ono 1995 (Hebrew), pp. 45-46, where he quotes from the Epilogue of the book, ''Ṣeidah la’derekh'', and where the author writes of himself: “Let no wise man of the wise men of Israel blame me about what I have established in this book, except if he finds therein an error, whether arising from mine own analytical study or about the book’s composition. Let him correct that which is crooked, and may his reward be doubled. Now, those who are greater than me, unto the dust of whose feet mine own dust is unable to attain, they () have been errant in several matters, yet, they are at ease and unmolested. How much more then, and ''a fortiori'', me, who am imprisoned along with the children of my household. We cannot leave the entrance of the tower without permission. Now, () the highest of the highest keeps watch (i.e. God), besides the constraints laid upon us at this time, I have no more than what I am able to procure for my sustenance on a daily basis, and am oppressed by the king’s retinue to do their business, () in mine own labour all throughout the day, I am not at ease, nor do I have rest, neither do I have the leisure, excepting only during the nights. Occasionally, if I should find respite in obtaining enough provisions for four or five days, my scarcity is greeted with some relief; I am happy with my portion, and my mind is then at rest a little, and I will then arise in the final third watch of the night, according to my fervid wish, to engage in the work of heaven, etc.”〕 It was at this time that al-Ḍāhirī made a vow to return to the Holy Land, after he had performed a pending vow.〔Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Chapter Twelve, Benei Barak 2008, p. 89.〕 It is uncertain whether or not he ever made the return trip. Al-Ḍāhirī mentions that the community was visited in 1595 – some twenty-seven years after their imprisonment had begun – by an emissary of the rabbis in the Land of Israel, Rabbi Avraham b. Yiṣḥaq Ashkenazi, who had been sent there with many books and with letters of recommendation to raise money for the poor in the Land of Israel.〔Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī, ''Sefer Ha-Mūsar'' (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Chapter Forty, Benei Barak 2008, pp. 248-250〕 Al-Ḍāhirī, however, deemed it necessary to explain in a letter addressed to the said emissary that the Jewish people in Yemen were too poor themselves to render any assistance to their brothers in the Land of Israel. Scholars of comparative Arabic-Hebrew literature are quick to point out that these hardships facing the Jewish community in Yemen often gave rise to messianic aspirations in al-Ḍāhirī’s rhymed prose.〔Yosef Tobi, ''Politics and poetry in the works of Shalom Shabazī'', Journal: Israel Affairs, Publisher: Routledge 2014, pp. 4, 8; Zechariā Al-Ḏāhrī, ''Sefer Hammusar'' (ed. Yehuda Ratzaby), Ben Zvi Institute, Jerusalem 1965, pp. 7-32; 36-37 (Hebrew)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Zechariah Dhahiri」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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