KARAITE AND RABBANITE TEXTS IN TRANSIT: BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE CRIMEA

The Crimean Peninsula was one of the important Jewish cultural centers of the Black Sea region, as evidenced by the surviving manuscripts found during the 19th century in the Rabbanite and Karaite Crimean and Byzantine communities. These manuscripts – their texts, colophons, deeds of sale, or ownership notes are used in this article as tools for reconstructing cultural history of these communities. They reveal Byzantine influences on various spheres of the intellectual life of Crimean Jewry, as well as on the pathways of transmission of books and of the distribution of knowledge between the Crimea and the Mediterranean. These selected materials show the patterns of interaction between the Rabbanites and Karaites, including their practices of consumption and exchange of texts.