The ''Solomon bar Simson Chronicle'' is an anonymous

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

narrative history produced in the mid-12th century (1140). Like the ''

Eliezer bar Nathan Eliezer ben Nathan () of Mainz (1090–1170), or Ra'avan (), was a halakist and liturgical poet. As an early Rishon, he was a contemporary of the Rashbam and Rabbeinu Tam, and one of the earliest of the Tosafists. He was the son-in-law of Rabbi ...

Chronicle'' and the ''

Mainz Anonymous The ''Mainz Anonymous'' (or the ''Narrative of the Old Persecutions'') is an account of the First Crusade of 1096 written soon thereafter by an anonymous Jewish author. The work is written in Hebrew. Its author is unknown and it deals primarily ...

'', it is concerned with the persecutions of Jewish communities in the

Rhineland The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section. Term Historically, the Rhinelands ...

area, notably Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Trier, during the

First Crusade The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic ru ...

(1095-1099). The text comes down to us in a manuscript of the 15th century, which was discovered only in the late 19th century. The transmitted text is complete, but marred by many scribal errors. A passage in the section on the Jewry in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

provides a date of 1140 for at least that part in which it occurs.

Contents and themes

The history focuses primarily on the Jewish martyrs of the persecutions. Anecdotal accounts were included to commemorate the martyrs, some of whom responded in extraordinarily radical fashion to the violence that awaited them. A Jew from Worms named Meshullam ben Isaac, for instance, is said to have sacrificed his son Isaac, killed his wife Zipporeh and finally to have committed suicide in order that their deaths will not come about at the hands of the Crusaders. The narrator comments that through his deed,

Meshullam ben Isaac Meshullam is a biblical masculine name meaning "Befriended". In the Hebrew Bible, the name Meshullam was borne by eleven characters: # One of the chief Gadites in Bashan during the time of Jotham (). # Grandfather of Shaphan, "the scribe", in ...

surpassed the patriarch Abraham.Chazan, ''God, humanity and history'', p. 121.

References

Secondary sources

*Chazan, Robert. ''God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives''. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2000. {{ISBN, 978-0-520-22127-7. Crusade literature Jewish medieval literature 1140s books 1140 in Europe

Contents and themes

See also

References

Secondary sources