Mourad Farag and His Book, The Karaites and the Rabbanites

Résumé En

The modern history of Karaism and Karaites is one of the most neglected corners in the whole field of Jewish and Near Eastern studies. Particularly in the 20th century, unrecorded history is bound to become permanently lost history, an eventuality surely to be regretted. The present paper attempts to rescue from oblivion a recent member of the Cairene Karaite community. Mourad Farag (1867-1955), born in a family of goldsmiths, became a successful attorney at law, but devoted much of his leisure to Jewish studies and became a self-taught scholar in this field. He published a long series of works in Hebrew grammar, comparative Hebrew and Arabic philol¬ ogy, Karaite law, Biblical exegesis, and kindred subjects, as well as copious Arabic and Hebrew poetry. The paper examines in particular detail his work entitled The Karaites and the Rabbanites, in which he goes into great detail in examining the differences between the two camps, as well as the history of the Karaites and their literary activity. His intention throughout is to avoid intolerance and recriminations and to promote mutual understanding, and he is equally opposed to extremism on either the Karaite or the Rabbanite side. If occasionally he bases his conclusions on insufficient evi¬ dence, this is probably due to his lack of access to, or inability to read fluently, the pertinent Rabbanite sources in the original. On the other hand, in some aspects, for example in his concern for the rights of women, he is clearly under the influence of modern Western thought. An important product of modern Karaite literature ; neither work nor author should be permitted to lapse into oblivion.