The Alfaẓ al-Mishnah Commentary by R. Saadiah Gaon

This article presents a commentary on the Mishna composed by R. Saadiah Gaon, who served as head of the Sura yeshivah in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th century. The commentary is a Hebrew-Arabic glossary defining difficult words in the Mishnah. The commentary is well referenced in writings from early periods, and a large portion of the manuscript was recently identified in the Cairo Genizah. I present a number of proofs that R. Saadiah Gaon authored the commentary and show that many adaptions were made to this commentary in several manuscripts. This unpublished commentary is the earliest systematic commentary on rabbinic literature.