Welcome to the “Proof of Concept” Preview of “Maps of God” - The Ilanot Portal
On this site, we welcome you to explore the “Maps of God” Ilanot Portal in its dynamic development. This site is updated nightly to reflect any new content and features that have been implemented by our collaborating teams at the University of Haifa and the University of Göttingen.
Please note that this site was created for internal use and is open to the general public as a courtesy. The development and implementation of the feature-rich end-user site is currently underway and is expected to be completed by 2024.
“Maps of God” (MoG) is the flagship digital humanities initiative of the Ilanot Project, dedicated to the research of Jewish kabbalistic diagrams known as ilanot (“trees,” being intricately inscribed parchment scrolls dedicated to mapping the divine realm). The MoG platform presents scientific editions of the great ilanot using an innovative linked-data approach to enable scholars and laypeople to explore these fascinating artifacts for the first time.
The development of this “proof of concept” platform has been funded by the Volkswagen Foundation-funded Niedersächsisches Vorab: Research Cooperation Lower Saxony – Israel scheme. Basic research on the materials edited on this site was funded by Israel Science Foundation Personal Grant 1568/18.
Below you will find manuscripts that are in various stages of preparation at this time.
Here is provided a how-to guide for the search functions available on the portal.
For the new history of the genre, The Kabbalistic Tree by J. H. Chajes, and a special discount code click here.
MS Hunt. Add. D היריעה המפוארת - כתב יד
Oxford, MS Hunt. Add. D. is a particularly fine, early, and well-preserved witness of a family of large manuscript rotuli ("ilanot") to which we have given the name "The Magnificent Parchment." Only one witness ...
היריעה המפוארת, אוסף פרטי
This witness of the Magnificent Parchment, found today in an anonymous private collection, is a fine, early, and well-preserved paper copy of a family of large manuscript rotuli ("ilanot") to which we have given the name "The Magnificent ...
היריעה הוונציאנית הגדולה
The Grand Venetian Parchment of R. Elijah Menaḥem Ḥalfan and R. Abraham Ṣarfati was crafted as a collaborative project of these two kabbalists in 1533.
Vatican City, BAV, MS Vat.ebr. Borg.ebr. 21 Ilan
This seventeenth-century Italian copy of a classical ilan that goes back to the fourteenth century demonstrates the ongoing relevance of such artifacts even in an era typically presumed to have been dominated by ...
היריעה המפוארת
Leeds University Library, MS Roth 418 preserves a fragment of a family of large manuscript rotuli ("ilanot") to which we have given the name "The Magnificent Parchment." The fascinating fragment shows a work in ...
Brescia - Biblioteca Queriniana - MS L FI 11
The Brescia parchment was likely written by a Spanish scribe around the late fourteenth century. The text has been attributed to Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla (1248–ca. 1305). It deploys a distinctive rota-augmented ...
Vatican City, BAV, MS Vat.ebr. 530 III
The striking ilan preserved in the Vatican library exhibits a top edge cut in a manner that retains the natural contours of the animal skin while suggesting something like a peaked roof. According to the colophon on ...
München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod.hebr. 448
Cod.hebr. 448 is a single parchment sheet classical ilan. According to Maximilian de Molière, it was likely copied by Francesco Parnas for Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter around 1537. During that period, Parnas was ...
München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod.hebr. 119
This miniaturized ilan drafted in semicursive script by an Italian scribe ca. 1500 is in the back binding of a miscellany now in Munich: Munich, BSB, Cod.hebr. 119, fols. 24b–25a. The classical parchment behind it is ...
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hunt. Add. E
Early in the sixteenth century, an old copy of the “Great Parchment” was acquired by the Italian humanist and philosopher Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (1472–1532). The text it bore was the idiosyncratic treatise on the ...
Gross Family Collection Trust 083.011.002
This seventeenth-century Italian copy of a classical ilan that goes back to the fourteenth century demonstrates the ongoing relevance of such artifacts even in an era typically presumed to have been dominated by ...
היריעה המפוארת – סינסינטי, היברו יוניון קולג, ספריית קלאו, מגילות 65.1
Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College, The Klau Library Scrolls 65.1 appears to be the earliest witness of a family of large manuscript rotuli ("ilanot") to which we have given the name "The Magnificent Parchment." Only one witness (London, BL, MS Or. 6465 Scroll © The British Library Board) carries a ...
היריעה המפוארת - כתב יד הספריה הבריטית 6465
London, BL, MS Or. 6465 Scroll © The British Library Board is a well-preserved witness of the family of large manuscript rotuli ("ilanot") to which we have given the name "The Magnificent Parchment." It was copied by the Polish kabbalist ...
היריעה המפוארת - כתב יד בית המדרש לרבנים באמריקה, ק-105
Jewish Theological Seminary Library MS K105 is a fragment of a very well-executed witness that belongs to a manuscript family of large rotuli ilanot to which we have given the name "The Magnificent Parchment." It was likely drafted in the sixteenth century by an Italian copyist, perhaps with some ...
ירושלים, הספריה הלאומית, כתב יד 1257
This ilan was crafted by R. Joshua ben David (active early-seventeenth-century), a student of R. Samuel Barzani, the preeminent rabbinic scholar of Kurdistan in the period. The ilan was modeled upon the notion of the “Four Worlds” of Aẓilut, Beriah, Yeẓirah, and ‘Assiyah, which was commonplace in ...
היריעה המפוארת – ספריית אוניברסיטת אופסלה
This extraordinary Magnificent Parchment was donated to the Uppsala University Library in 1705 by Nicolas Bergius (1658-1706). The first mention of the item at the Uppsala University Library is a handwritten inventory list from ca 1730: "Tabula Sephirotica membr.[anea] ex donat.[ione] D.[omini] ...
Cincinnati, HUC, Klau Scrolls 69
The Grupa Ilan, a Great Tree of type KPaZP7, is the earliest known Great Tree to reach us that begins with the first four frames of Knorr’s original Saruqian ilan (Kabbala denudata I, Apparatus IV, figs. 8–11). K is followed by PaZP7, the spliced integration of Poppers and Ẓemaḥ. This ilan also ...
Oxford Ms Opp 128
Library of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Ms. 293
ירושלים, הספרייה הלאומית, Ms. Heb. 4°9795 (Module P)
This ilan, copied around 1700 by a scribe of German or Bohemian origin, is one of only two known copies that exclusively preserve Meir Poppers’ original ilan. The second, copied by Behr Eibeschütz Perlhefter (ca. ...
Amsterdam, Ets Haim – Livraria Montezinos, Ms. 47 E 53
קיימברידג' טריניטי סקרול
Ms. Heb. 4°9790 אילן קופיו -- ירושלים, הספריה הלאומית, כ״י
אילן גדול -- ירושלים, הספריה הלאומית, כ״י Heb. 4°9787
מנטובה, הקהילה היהודית של מנטובה, כ״י ebr. 108
מנטובה, הקהילה היהודית של מנטובה, כ״י ebr. 51
אוסף מאיר בניהו, ירושלים, אילן
אילן הספירות
National Library of Israel, Ms. Heb. 4°9794
פופרס אילן של פרלהפטר - - אוסף מאגנס לאמנות וחיים יהודיים, אוניברסיטת קליפורניה, ברקלי, acc. no. 67.1.11.3
אופסלה, ספריית האוניברסיטה, O Hebr. 27
Gross Family Collection Trust, Tel Aviv, Israel Ms. GR.011.012
Copy of ʻEtz Ḥayyim by Ḥayyim ben Joseph Vital produced in 1729, richly decorated and including a fold-out ilan sewn at the back: the Ilan of Expanded Divine Names.
Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Ms. D 50
The manuscript contains binding fragments; also of Tosafot to tractate Ketubbot 29b–31a.
The National Library of Israel, Ms. Heb. 9788°4
Amulet scroll based on Isaac ben Michael Coppio’s two-column Ilan (cf. NLI Ms. Heb. 9790°4), produced in Jerusalem by the scribe Nissim Sajira for a client named Moses ben Malakand Kohen. ...
National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Ms. Heb. 4° 9810
Ilan Qameʿ (amulet tree) of the PaZW type, closely resembling the Jerusalem manuscript Ms. Heb. 4° 9813 in content but executed with greater skill.
הספרייה הלאומית, ירושלים, כ״י Heb. 4° 9812
A Kabbalistic amulet-tree based on the PaZW model, in the style of Ms. Heb. 4° 9805 (NLI). It includes significant textual additions, especially in the lower Pa component.
הספרייה הלאומית, ירושלים, כ״י Heb. 4° 9804
A large kabbalistic Ilan (PaZP7 type) including a framed Z component. The scribe began with a framed Z component incorporating text from Joseph Solomon ...
ניו יורק, ספריית חב"ד ליובאוויטש, כ״י מגילה 4902 ל
הספרייה הלאומית, ירושלים, כ״י Heb. 4°200.4
הספרייה הלאומית, ירושלים, כ״י Heb. 8°963
Gross Family Collection Trust 083.011.002
This seventeenth-century Italian copy of a classical ilan that goes back to the fourteenth century demonstrates the ongoing relevance of such artifacts even in an era typically presumed to have been dominated by ...