Acknowledgements
This book was born of two major research efforts: my doctoral dissertation (2010) and my subsequent work (2016–2017) as a research fellow in the DFG-DIP project Biblia Arabica: The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims, managed by Camilla Adange, Meira Polliack and Sabine Schmidtke.
I am very grateful to Meira Polliack for her caring accompaniment of my research over the many years since I began my work on my doctoral dissertation. She is also one of the two editors, together with Michael Wechsler, of Karaite Texts and Studies, of which this book is a part. I wish to thank them both for their guidance and support in writing this book. I learned much from them, and I am truly grateful for their input.
I am also very thankful to Eliezer Schlossberg and David Doron from Bar-Ilan University who supervised my doctoral dissertation, whose topic was Yefet’s commentary on the book of Amos. Special thanks go to Eliezer Schlossberg for his guidance over the years, and for his sound advice and wisdom. He also read the Judaeo-Arabic text of Yefet’s commentary on Amos in its initial stage, and I thank him for his insightful comments. I intend to publish the translation of the commentary together with him.
Additional thanks go to my colleagues in the Arabic Department at Bar-Ilan University, as well as to Arik Sadan and Yair Zoran for their aid and support.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the staff at Brill, especially Erika Mandarino and Arianne Moerland for their perception and cooperation.
Special thanks to my beloved family and friends, especially to my beloved mother, for her sympathy and support. I thank my three wonderful children, Shachar, Ido and Yaara, for their patience, love and understanding. I hope the process of writing the book was enlightening and fulfilling for them, too. Special thanks are due to my eldest son Shachar for his technical assistance.
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.