Estori ha-Parchi: Medieval Geographer of Eretz Yisrael
🗺️ Exiled from France, Estori made his way the Land of Israel, where he became one of its most significant premodern geographers, making insights of relevance down to the present day.
You’re reading Stories from Jewish History, a weekly newsletter exploring Jewish thinkers, events, and artifacts, from the famous to the obscure. This week I have a real treat for you guys! Estori ha-Parchi is a great favorite of mine for his penetrating mind, notably nerdy interests, and cosmopolitan nature. In the course of my doctoral research, I intensively studied the medieval community of Provence, from where Estori hails—it was the epicenter of the event I was re-examining. This fascinating and lost community deserves, I think, greater attention than it often receives.
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The region medieval Jews termed “Provence” was a far larger area than the current French province of that name: it covered the whole of southern France, in which Occitan languages were spoken. Occitan languages are markedly distinct from Old French, spoken in the northern regions of what is today France; they are more similar to Catalan, a modern variety of which is spoken in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalunya, with its occasional gestures towards political independence. The patchwork of noble families that ruled over the medieval south of France drew gradually closer to the theoretical and actual powers of the French Crown, though at the Western periphery, they were often beholden to Spanish monarchs. This is to say that the region we’ll call Provence is more distinct as a cultural entity than as a political one. Hence the tendency of general history to refer to it by its linguistic continuities: Languedoc or Occitania.
The Jews of Provence—whose vernacular speech was indeed Occitan, making their literary language Hebrew—were geographically located at the very crossroads of Ashkenaz and Sefarad. This made them uniquely situated to absorb cultural influences from both of these great spheres of Jewish civilization. The earlier phase of Provençal Jewish life, up to around 1150, was dominated by Ashkenazi modes of thinking and learning. The same migration routes that fed early Ashkenaz flowed through southern France, probably from Byzantine south Italy. (I’m going to devote an issue of the newsletter to the foundations of Ashkenaz, which will go into this in more detail.) After this earlier period, Sefardi influences became more pronounced in Provence. This made the community richly seeded with multiple modes of Torach scholarship as well as the scientific and humanistic disciplines favored by the Sefardi curriculum. It also made Provence the epicenter of cultural clashes between the divergent worldviews of the two great cultural spheres.
A Provençal Life, Interrupted
Estori ha-Parchi (1280–c. 1355) is a consummate representative of the variegated culture of late medieval Provence. His name tells us much about his background: he styles himself Ish Tori (איש תורי), which sounds like “a man of Tours,” though this is unlikely; it is usually rendered as Estori in Latin characters. Another possibility is the rabbinic name אשתור which appears in the Yerushalmi, the moniker of a fellow wanderer throughout Eretz Yisrael, also mentioned in Seder ha-Dorot. Yet another is a variation of the common vernacular name Astruc. As for his unusual surname—it was a beloved Provençal practice, reflective of the central place belles-lettres enjoyed in its culture, to Hebraize names in a manner peculiar to Provence: the meaning of the vernacular place-name was translated into Hebrew before being called into service as a surname. Thus we have many Provençal figures known as ha-Yarchi (הירחי - “of the moon”), a translation of the city called Lunel (from “moon,” modern French: lune). In Estori’s case, his family seems to have originally hailed from the city of Florenza in Andalusia, Spain. Ha-Parchi (“of the flower”) is a translation from the Castilian flor, “flower.” The transmutation of ha-Parchi’s name by means of the Provençal custom demonstrates the family’s long standing in the region.
A relative of the great Ibn Tibbon family of Arabic translators and philosophers, Estori studied first in Montpellier under his relative R. Yaakov ben Machir Ibn Tibbon. He also acquired a medical education—perhaps also in Montpellier, a center of medical knowledge—which served him as his occupation throughout his life. Estori’s work as a physician also, it seems, reflected his keen interest in and propensity for what we today call scientific thinking. He would later marshal this inquisitiveness towards the goal of better understanding the geography and history of the Land of Israel
Still a young man at the time of the traumatic French expulsion of 1306, one in a series of large-scale expulsions in Western Europe that would largely empty it of its Jews by 1500, Estori fled, like so many other Provençal Jews, westward. He first went to Perpignan, today a French city just north of the Pyrenees, formally under the purview of the ruling family in Barcelona, and therefore exempted from the order of expulsion. From there Estori proceeded to Barcelona and then to Toledo, where he learned under the great authority R. Asher ben Yechiel (Rosh). However, he was not content to remain in Europe and decided to make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael, where he would bring his very Provençal interests and education to bear upon the ancient Land.
Topography, Geography, and Holiness of the Land of Israel
In 1313, Estori was in Cairo, en route to the Land of Israel. He arrived shortly thereafter, initially making his way to Jerusalem. However, disappointed by the negative attitude towards the works of Rambam (Maimonides)—so greatly valued in Jewish Provence—Estori left Jerusalem. He settled in Beit Shean (Beisan), in the eastern Galil (Galilee), where he worked as a physician and undertook an unusual pursuit: the systematic study of the Land. He first scoured the Galil over the course of two years, which was followed by a five-year study to the remaining parts of the Land of Israel. By 1322, he had completed his magnum opus: a book playfully and poetically titled Sefer Kaftor va-Ferach (The Book of the Calyx and Petal), a reference to the distinctive appearance of the Menorah in the Beit ha-Mikdash (Jerusalem Temple) as well as to Estori’s own name, Parchi, “flowery.”
Kaftor va-Ferach is not primarily a geographic work or an account of holy sites, as with many of the previous travelers’ accounts we’ve examined. It is, rather, primarily a halachic (legal) work, centering on the mitzvot (commandments) pertaining to Eretz Yisrael, its halachic parameters, the complex matter of tithing produce, and, more generally, the intense holiness of the Land. Within its chapters, Kaftor va-Ferach includes many significant identifications of sites that have been borne out by modern research. In particular, Estori recognized that local Arabic names often preserved Biblical and Talmudic place-names. In addition, Estori examined realia he found, especially coins, making many important observations that are still considered largely accurate.
Estori’s Observations
In the introduction to Kaftor va-Ferach, Estori provides, in the rhymed prose that endeared itself so well to Provençal Jews, a spiritual account of his reasons for making aliyah:
היות כוונתנו להתקדש בקדושת ארץ ישראל, לעלות שם באימה ולא בחומה. הגביר עלינו חסדו, באנו אל הארץ בצדקתו. זהרה ואורה טהרתה, וקדושתה בראשיתה. שיוריה ניכרין, אלא שמחוסרת דיורין. כאשר באנו הוצרכנו לחדש שם המלוכה, להעביר ממצוות התלויות בארץ, דשתיך טפי, החלודה, על פי ההלכה.
Given that our intention is to sanctify ourselves with the sanctity of the Land of Israel, to ascend there with reverence and without force: He increased upon us His compassion and we came to the Land by His righteousness. Radiance and light purified it, and the holiness it possessed from its beginning. Its measure is well-known, even as its residents are few. When we arrived there we were impelled to renew kingship, to carry on commandments bound up with the Land, to remove a little of the rust, according to halacha.
Estori ha-Parchi, Kaftor va-Ferach, Introduction
Evident here is Estori’s pragmatic desire to renew the Land to the extent possible and revitalize Jewish practice by enabling himself to take on those mitzvot which can only be performed inside Eretz Yisrael.
Most of Kaftor va-Ferach, written in medieval rabbinic Hebrew, consists of halachic analysis culled from copious citations of rabbinic literature and of the Rishonim. Here and there, however, where relevant, Estori inserts an observation he has made himself. “Beit Shean lies half a day from Tverya (Tiberias),” he writes at one juncture, “The Yarden (Jordan River) lies to the east, a one hour’s walk.” He also notes that a destroyed Beit Shean synagogue, mentioned in the Yerushalmi (Megilla 3:1), still lies there in ruins, “with three great halls facing Jerusalem.” His deep inquiry about the halachot of Eretz Yisrael is, at such moments, embodied in his own peregrinations and first-hand experience of the Land itself in the fourteenth century, when it was in the hands of the Mamluks.
Reads and Resources
A. M. Luncz’s 1899 critical edition of Kaftor va-Ferach is available at: https://hebrewbooks.org/32812
I also like this three-volume edition (1994-2007):
Volume 1: https://hebrewbooks.org/47648
Volume 2: https://hebrewbooks.org/47649
Volume 3: https://hebrewbooks.org/47650
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Enjoyed as always, TY!
When Estori writes that he ascended to the Land of Israel באימה, לא בחומה, he is referring to the oath prohibiting us from ascending to Israel בחומה, as a wall, i.e., en masse, by force. See Talmud Kesubos 111a with Rashi. The translation should be something like "and not by force."
A relative of the Ibn Tibbons, wow!