Tafsīr Tehilim (Persian Translation of Psalms)

Among Jews, the Arabic term tafsīr indicates a translation of holy texts; Se‘adya Gaon’s Arabic translation of Hebrew Bible is known as the Tafsīr. The Judeo-Persian tafsīr tradition likely began with biblical books and was later extended to include other texts, most written by anonymous translators. Within this tradition, tafsīrs of Psalms were particularly popular. Some remain close to the source text, even utilizing the original Hebrew syntax without regard for Persian sentence structure, while others are paraphrases, and some even incorporate commentary. A critical edition of this tafsīr of the book of Psalms was published in the late twentieth century based on five surviving manuscripts, the earliest of which dates from 1796/7. The translation is not literal and does not mirror the biblical syntax. Moreover, in some places the translator incorporated commentary, drawing on the Aramaic Targum, midrashim, and the commentaries by Rashi and Abraham Ibn Ezra. Some scholars have suggested that this tafsir was written by one Bābā’i Nuri’el of Isfahan with the help of a Muslim scholar around the year 1740.