On a Known – Unknown Strophic Poem from the Cairo Genizah: An Authentic or a Plagiarized Version?

Among the wide range of subjects covered by the Cairo Genizah, the bulk of which is deposited at the University of Cambridge, Mediaeval Hebrew poetry is undoubtedly one of the most important topics, offering to the student of this genre thousands of poems in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic, which were composed by well-known and anonymous poets who lived in Spain, North Africa and the Near East between the 10th and 13th centuries. The structures and styles of these poems usually followed in the footsteps of Arab poets who devised a system of rigid metres and rhyming. Nevertheless, many Hebrew poems deviated from the rules of Arabic composition and adopted a more flexible structure. Among the poetic genres of Medieval Hebrew poetry, one finds the muwaššaḥ, i.e. a strophic poem which consists of a few stanzas and rhymes that are repeated in each of the stanzas. The article provides an annotated edition, English translation and detailed analysis of fragment T-S AS 121.215 of which two of its stanzas appear in the second part of the collection of love poems by Moshe ben Yaʿaqov Ibn Ezra (circa 1065–1135). The article compares the two versions and endeavours to provide answers concerning their authenticity and authorship.