Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ al-Eṣfahānī

Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ al-Eṣfahānī, a Jewish poet of the 17^th-18^th/11^th-12^th centuries.

Nothing is known about his life and career except that he lived for some time in Isfahan. At the beginning of his book shūfṭīm-nāma, he introduces himself as follows: “Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ Ṣafāhūnī, resident of Yazd.”¹ After Shāhīn Shīrāzī (d. 14^th/8^th  century) and ‛Emrānī* al-Eṣfahānī (d. 15^th-16^th/ 9^th-10^th centuries), Aharūn is considered the third link in the chain of epic poets of Judeo-Persian literature (the corpus of literary texts produced by the Jews of Iran in the Persian language written in Hebrew script). He and several other Jewish poets sought to render the Hebrew Bible into Persian verse.²

Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ lived during the reigns of Shah ‛Abbās II* (r. 1642–1666/1052–1077) and Shah Sulaymān* Ṣafavī (r. 1666 or 1667–1694/1077 or 1078–1105), a period during which non-Muslims in Iran experienced severe hardships. In the Carmelite chronicles, which contain first-hand accounts of events of this period, reference is made to widespread persecutions against the Jews of Isfahan under these two rulers, including the enforcement of forced conversion of the Jews during the reign of Shah ‛Abbās II³ for a period of six years, and the hanging of a rabbi and two leaders of the Jewish community of Isfahan on charges of obstructing the effectiveness of the rain-prayer, by order of Shah Sulaymān.⁴ These events and the persecutions inflicted upon the Jews under various pretexts led to their flight from Isfahan, while those who remained were compelled to pay heavy costs in order to preserve their Jewish identity.⁵ However, these circumstances were not solely the result of internal conditions, but were probably also influenced by the emergence of a false Māshīyaḥ (Messiah) in the Ottoman lands during the same period. In 1648/1057, Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676/1035–1087) proclaimed a messianic redemption in the city of Izmir and, over the course of twenty years, gained such widespread acceptance that Jewish prayer books were adorned with his image. He eventually converted to Islam at the court of Sultan Muhammad IV in 1666/1077, and a number of his followers likewise embraced Islam. Sabbatai died ten years later in exile, and after his death his followers continued to propagate his messianic doctrines.⁶

After proclaiming his messianic mission, Sabbatai conferred upon some of his most devoted followers the title of “king,” in imitation of the tradition of the ancient kings of Israel and Judah; among them, he granted Mattathias b. Benjamin Zeʾev Bloch the title “King Asa.” One year later, Bloch was regarded as one of the leaders of the Sabbatian movement in Egypt. However, after Sabbatai converted to Islam and the messianic movement collapsed, Bloch remained steadfast in his belief, but left Egypt and went to Mosul. In the Kurdish regions, Bloch propagated his belief in Sabbatai and, on the evidence of the dates of his letters, remained active until 1668/1078. According to Scholem, the author of the entry on Bloch in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, no further information about him is available after this date.⁷ Some authors, however, have associated Bloch with Isfahan, although proving his presence in the city is difficult. Among them is Amnon Netzer, who refers to these events with only a slight chronological gap and maintains that the final outcome of Bloch’s career can be traced to Isfahan.⁸ Likewise, Yehuda b. El‛azar, a Jewish philosopher from Kashan of this period, relates in his book Ḥovot Yehuda that Rabbi Mattityahu [Mattathias Bloch] was killed in Isfahan in 1664/1075, and that because of him the Jews of Isfahan suffered great losses and damages.⁹ Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ, at the end of his book, attributes his departure from Isfahan and his move to Yazd to this very incident and the events that followed. He refers to the killing of four rabbis and the imposition of a heavy poll tax (jezye) upon the Jewish community, and mentions Bloch by his diminutive name, “Mattiya.”:

Rabbi Mattiya came to Isfahan,
and they killed him, as they did Zechariah.

Then, after a time, those four mullahs changed their fate,
they were killed by the command of God Almighty.

Because of his oppression, I suffered much hardship,
many a poison I tasted at the hands of the community.

At last I became homeless, unwillingly,
and in the end I fell into exile.

For they declared, following him, a decree:
that a poll tax be imposed for seven years.

My return from exile was for this very reason;
it was, as though, my destiny and my allotted fate.

Ṣefāhān āmad ān rebī Mattīyā
verā kushtand mānand-e Zakarīyā

Degar shud muddatī ān chār mullā
shudand kushte ze amr-e ḥaqq ta‛ālā

Ze javr-e ū basī zaḥmat keshīdam
basā zahrī ke az ummat chashīdam

Shudam bī-khānemān ākhar be-nāchār
uftādam man be ghurbat ākhar-e kār

Ke chun guftand pey-e ū yek qaḍīye
buvad az bahr-e haft-sālī jezīye

Ze ghurbat āmadan bahr-e hamīn būd
qaḍā va qesmatam gūyī chunīn būd¹⁰

Two main factors have been cited for Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ’s choice of Yazd as his destination of migration: first, its proximity to Isfahan, and second, the more favorable conditions there in comparison with Kashan*, and the presence of an old Jewish community in Yazd. It is worth noting that the people of Yazd, owing to their social connections and relatively sound economic conditions, were able to annul the decrees of forced conversion and exile (nafy-e balad) during the reign of Shah ‛Abbās II.¹¹

Of Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ, only the shūfṭīm-nāme has survived—a work composed in Persian, written in Hebrew script, and cast in verse—which he completed in 1691/1103.¹² This book, comprising approximately three thousand couplets, is written in the mathnavī form and in the meter hazj musaddas maḥdhūf, and has an epic character. The shūfṭīm-nāme, or the Book of Judges, corresponds to one of the sections of the Hebrew Bible and recounts the history of the Children of Israel in the Promised Land after Joshua until the beginning of the period of kingship. Its central theme is the recurrent apostasy of the people and divine punishment, followed by the Israelites’ turning to God in times of hardship and the raising of divinely inspired leaders (judges) to bring deliverance and establish peace in the Promised Land.¹³

Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ organized the shūfṭīm-nāme into fifty-three chapters in accordance with the Book of Judges in the section of the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible. He begins with the death of Joshua* and the episode of Judah and Simeon going to war against the Philistines, and treats all the chapters concerning the judges, including Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Balac, Gideon, Abimelech, Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, and Samson. He refers only briefly to chapter eighteen of the Book of Judges, in which Micah ultimately joins the tribe of Dan, and concludes his book with the departure of the Levite from the tribe of Judah to Micah and the Levite’s acceptance as his priest. Aharūn does not address chapters nineteen to twenty-one of the Book of Judges, which recount the episode of the collective assault by ruffians on the Levite’s concubine and the ensuing inter-tribal war and massacre.¹⁴

Since ‛Emrānī had intended to versify the Book of Judges as part of his work, the fatḥ-nāme, but for various reasons was unable to complete this task, the copyists appended Aharūn’s shūfṭīm-nāme to his fatḥ-nāme.¹⁵ The shūfṭīm-nāme is likewise composed in the same meter as ‛Emrānī’s fatḥ-nāme.¹⁶ At the conclusion of his book, Aharūn b. Māshīyaḥ refers to ‛Emrānī as his elder and teacher, and declares that ‛Emrānī entrusted the composition of this book to him in a dream, like a flower placed in his hand. According to Aharūn, some people assume that he stole his verses from ‛Emrānī; he emphasizes that if anyone can prove this claim, he is willing to pay a penalty of two hundred dinars for each couplet.¹⁷

Like Shāhīn and ‛Emrānī, Aharūn employed Islamic terms and names in his work—such as Bārī Ta‛ālā, (God the Exalted) Ḥaqq Jalla Jalāluh, (the Truth, exalted be His majesty) and Ḥaẓrat Mūsā Kalīmullāh (Moses, the one who spoke with God)—in place of Hebrew names, while also using Hebrew terms that had Persian equivalents, including Geula (redemption), Yeshua (savior), and Miqra (the Torah). Nevertheless, in both quantity and quality his poetry does not attain the level of those two.

Aharūn’s fame, unlike that of Shāhīn and ‛Emrānī, did not become widespread, and Jewish historians such as Habib Levi did not include him among the ranks of Jewish poets. Moreover, in the present-day cemeteries of Isfahan and Yazd—which contain tombstones dating back to the Safavid period—no gravestone bearing his name has been identified.¹⁸ The first scholar to recognize his work was Amnon Netzer; after him, Vera Basch Moreen and Nahīd Pīrnaẓar published small portions of the shūfṭīm-nāme in anthologies of Jewish poets. The tradition of versifying the Hebrew Bible among Jewish poets has continued down to the present day; among the most recent representatives of this tradition is Ebrāhīm Sa‛īdīyān of Isfahan.

/Lea Daniali/

Bibliography

A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia and the Papal mission of the XVII^th and XVIII^th centuries, vol.1, London: Eyre & Spotswood, 1939.

Āharūn b. Māshīyaḥ al-Eṣfahānī. shūfṭīm-nāma. Manuscript, National Library of Israel, Heb. MS no. 6838.

Bābāyī b. Luṭf Kāshānī. ketāb-e anūsī. Translated, edited, and studied by Amīr-Ali Fallāḥīyān. Los Angeles: Book Corporation, 2021/1400.

dāʾerat al-ma‛āref-e ketāb-e muqaddas. Translated by Alīs ‛Alīyāʾī et al. Tehran: Sorkhdār, 2002/1381.

Greenstone, Julius Hillel. The messianic idea in Judaism. Translated into Persian by Hussein Tawfīqī. Qum: University of Religions and Denominations, 1999/1378.

Gūharīyān, Isḥāq. Member of the Jewish Association of Yazd. Interview. Interviewer: Lea Daniali, 11 September 2025/20 Shahrīvar 1404.

Moreen, Vera Basch, In Queen Esther’s garden: an anthology of Judeo-Persian literature, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Moreen, Vera Basch, “The Safavid era”, in Esther’s children: a portrait of Iranian Jews, ed. Houman Sarshar, Beverly Hills, Calif.: Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, 2002.

Netzer, Amnon. “seyrī dar adabīyāt-e yahūd-e Iran.” In Pādīyāvand, edited by Amnon Netzer, vol. 1. Los Angeles: Mazda Publishers, 1996.

Netzer, Amnon. ganjīne-ye nuskhe-hā-ye khaṭṭī yahūdīyān-e Iran dar muʾassese-ye Ben-Ṣevī (be ‛ebrī) (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1985.

Pīrnaẓar, Nahīd. fārsī-hūd. Tehran: Pardīs-e Dānesh, 2018/1397.

Sharīfī, Yūsuf. dard-e ahl-e dhemme: negareshī bar zendegī-ye ejtemā‛ī-ye aqallīyat-hā-ye madhhabī dar avākher-e ‛aṣr-e Ṣafavī. Los Angeles: Book Corporation, 2008/1387.

The Bible. Old Testament (Persian translation). Vol. 2: ketāb-hā-ye tārīkh, bar asās-e ketāb-e muqaddas-e Urshalīm. Translated by Pīrūz Sayyār. Tehran: Nashr-e Ney, 2017/1396.

Yerushalmi, David. “‛Emrānī: a Jewish poet of Iran.” In Pādīyāvand, edited by Amnon Netzer, vol. 2. Los Angeles: Mazda Publishers, 1997.

Scholem, Gershom, “Bloch, Mattathias Ben Benjamin Ze’ev (wolf) Ashkenazi”, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik, vol. 3, Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007.

Yahudah ben Elʻazar, Ḥovot Yehudah, ed. Amnon Netzer, Jerusalem: Mekhon Ben-Tsevi le-ḥeḳer ḳehilot Yiśraʼel ba-Mizraḥ, 1995.

1. Āharūn b. Māshīyaḥ al-Eṣfahānī, fol. 1b.[↩]
2. Pīrnaẓar, p. 39.[↩]
3. A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia, vol. 1, p. 364; also see: Bābāyī b. Luṭf Kāshānī, p. 147 and following.[↩]
4. A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia, vol. 1, p. 408.[↩]
5. Moreen, 2002, p. 70; also see: Sharīfī, pp. 96–97.[↩]
6. Greenstone, pp. 135–142.[↩]
7. Scholem, p. 766.[↩]
8. Netzer, 1985, p. 34.[↩]
9. Yahudah ben Elʻazar, p. 22.[↩]
10. Āharūn b. Māshīyaḥ al-Eṣfahānī, fol. 91a.[↩]
11. Bābāyī b. Luṭf Kāshānī, pp. 311–315.[↩]
12. Netzer, 1996, p. 79.[↩]
13. dāʾerat al-ma‛āref-e ketāb-e muqaddas, p. 148.[↩]
14. The Bible. Old Testament, p. 117–204.[↩]
15. Yerushalmi, p. 83; Netzer, 1996, p. 79.[↩]
16. Moreen, 2000, p. 143.[↩]
17. Āharūn b. Māshīyaḥ al-Eṣfahānī, fols. 91b, 92b.[↩]
18. Gūharīyān, interview dated 11 September 2025/20 Shahrīvar 1404.[↩]