The Secular Poetry of El'azar Ben Ya'aqov Ha-Bavli: Baghdad, Thirteenth Century on the Basis of Manuscript Firkovicz Heb. IIA, 210.1

The collection of Elazar's poetry is impressive and contains more than four hundred compositions with a striking preponderance of panegyrics, laments, homonymic poems, and epigrams. Elazar was strongly involved in promoting the Baghdadi-Jewish elite, dignified people who held high office in the city, either as government officials or as leaders of the Jewish community. This critical edition of a manuscript offers much literary and historical information about Baghdadi Jewry in the days before and during the Mongol invasion of 1258.