Aspects of the biblical material world in medieval Judeo-Arabic: Flora and Fauna in Abū al-Faraj Hārūn’s Glossary Šarh al-'Alfāz al-Sa'ba fī al-Miqra to Isaiah

This article examines how Abū al-Faraj Hārūn identified, translated, and interpreted the ancient biblical terms in the book of Isaiah in Arabic to learn about the material world of the Bible, as it was then perceived in the medieval Arab world and Persia. The article focuses on the topics of flora and fauna, providing a comparative analysis of Abū al-Faraj Hārūn’s definitions in the Šarh al-'Alfāz with the writings of other Karaite scholars from his circle and those of prior, contemporary, or later rabbinic exegetes. The study of these terms in scholars’ writings reveals that many of them were not understood in the same way by medieval exegetes; each interpreted the different terms and translated them into Arabic according to their understanding and the accepted interpretation in their times and places. Therefore, it is little wonder that conflicting opinions arose among different biblical commentators in different eras and different regions. Yet, it also occasionally happened that a biblical word was left untouched, without being translated into Arabic.