Love-Sickness and its Cure: A Reading of the Forty-Eighth Gate in Yehuda Al-Ḥarizi's Sefer Taḥkemoni

Abstract:In his analysis of the forty-eighth gate in Yehuda Al-Ḥarizi's Sefer Taḥkemoni, David Simha Segal argued that this story "leaves open the possibility of multiple and even contradictory readings" (The Book of Taḥkemoni – Jewish Tales from Medieval Spain, 2001, p. 622) and proposed alternative interpretations of the story. Segal's argument regarding the nature of this story is in line with my basic assumption that at the core of some of the most fascinating rhymed Hebrew stories from the Middle Ages – in Al-Ḥarizi's Taḥkemoni, but also in the work of his predecessors, Shlomo Ibn Ṣaqbel and Yosef Ibn Zabara – lies uncertainty as a poetic principle. From this perspective, while addressing Segal's interpretation, in this article I propose additional interpretive insights.