Beguiling Guidance

Adena Tanenbaum, Ph.D. (1993), Harvard, is an Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the Ohio State University. Author of The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain (Brill, 2002), she works on medieval Hebrew literature and Jewish intellectual history in Islamic lands.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 Historical Context2 Medieval Versus Early Modern3 Authorial Sensibilities4 Distinguishing Features of Sefer hamusar5 Literary Continuities and New Departures6 Kabbalah and Philosophy7 Receptivity to Printed Books8 A Unique Case?9 Earlier Perspectives on Sefer hamusar10 Postscript: Sefer hamusar as Auto/biography Manqué?11 Chapter Outline1 Literary Dimensions: Maqāma, Musar, Narrative and Poetic Techniques1 Setting the Scene: Author’s Introduction2 The Maqāma Genre3 The Idea of Fiction in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Literature4 Sefer hamusar: Structure, Texts, and Paratexts5 Stylistic and Narrative Techniques6 The Role of the Formal Poems2 Travel in Many Guises: Journeys Real and Imagined1 Reassessing Pre-modern Arabic and Hebrew Travel Narratives2 Toponyms3 Reading the Travel Accounts in Sefer hamusar4 Arabic and Hebrew Antecedents to the Travel Narratives5 Links between Framing Itineraries and Embedded Tales6 Symbolic Links: Damascus7 Thematic and Lexical Links: Ḥaḍramawt8 Socio-Cultural Relevance: Cochin9 Stasis and Movement: Writing from Prison10 Alḍāhirī’s Conception of Space11 Periphery and Center12 Stimuli to Travel in Sefer Hamusar13 Mobility and the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge and Practices14 Journeying and Questions of Identity15 The Significance of Place Names16 Cultural Orbits of the Travel17 Crossing Boundaries and Depicting Other Jewish Subcultures18 Other Eastern Jews19 Ashkenazim20 Romaniots?3 A Distinctive Sense of Self: Transregional Contacts with Jews in the Land of Israel1 Introduction2 Encounters with the Emissary from the Holy Land3 Talmud Study in the Land of Israel4 Ottoman Sephardi Dominance5 Pronunciation as a Marker of Difference6 The Impact of Print Culture4 Representations of Muslims: Perspectives on the Dominant Faith1 Techniques of Representation2 Conclusion: Historical and Imaginary Muslims5 Didacticism or Literary Legerdemain? Philosophy, Ethics, and the Picaresque1 Philosophical and Medical Conceptions of the Soul: The “Internal Senses”2 The Soul’s Moral Qualities3 A Poetic Coda4 Reliable Transmission?5 Pietist Pose6 Medical Imposture and Abstract Cures7 Sham Preachers and Moral Ambiguities6 A Conduit for Kabbalah: Belles-Lettres as a Medium for Mysticism1 The Kabbalistic Chapters2 Alḍāhirī as a Conduit for Kabbalistic Learning and its Reception in Yemen3  Alḍāhirī’s Relationship to Lurianic Kabbalah and the Poetry of the Safed Mystics4 Recurrent Kabbalistic Themes5 The Interplay between Kabbalistic and Narrative Elements6 Conclusions7 The Urge to Be Immortalized: Auto-Epitaphs, Eulogies, and the Afterlife of Sefer hamusar1 The Conflation of Author and Protagonists2 The Structural Function of the Epitaphs3 The Epitaph: Apology or Swan Song?BibliographyIndices