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Epistle regarding the calendar controversy of 921–22 CE, including a response by Aharon b. Meʾir, who writes from Palestine to Baghdad. The letter begins with a preface in liturgical-poetic style. The text was copied onto oblong parchment, possibly in the late tenth century; it is a quire consisting of four bifolios, three now in Oxford and a fourth in New York. The last folio (Bodl. MS Heb. f 26/6) is damaged, and the text is reconstructed here in comparison with the transcription that Harkavy published in 1891. In the publicly available images of ENA 2556.2 on FGP and PUL, the manuscript is warped and wrinkled and part of the text hidden. The newly treated manuscript, flattened and more legible, is available here on PGP. Join: Sacha Stern.

Calendar manual with distinctive Palestinian calendar traditions, such as the rule of 641–642. Defers to Babylonian calendar rules, in a way that is inconsistent and calendrically impossible. The outcome is a flawed manual that could never have been used. This text confirms that Palestinian calendar rules were preserved for well over a century after the controversy of 921/2. It also provides us, for the first time ever, with explicit evidence of a different version of the Four Gates, based on the month of Nisan. The manuscript can be dated by its script to the late eleventh or early twelfth centuries.93 The text begins on the first folio, and appears to finish at the bottom of the second; thus the manual appears to be preserved completely.

Karaite document, compiled by a delegation of 12 Gaza and Jerusalem Karaites, regarding the state of fields in the spring in order to determine whether to intercalate the year, March 1052.

What survives of this text consists mostly of an argument that calendrical decisions can only be taken by experts – which is too neutral to be identified with a specific historical context such as the Calendar Controversy of 921/2. Nevertheless, several features of this text point in the direction of the Calendar Controversy of 921/2. It implies in some places Palestinian hegemony in calendrical decisions, and it appears to repudiate the Four Gates, a Babylonian algorithm which we know from other sources was criticized by Palestinians at the time of the controversy. The text extant begins by arguing, largely through Talmudic quotations, that calendar decisions can only be taken by Palestinian authorities who are expert in the science of the calendar. A passage of the Babylonian Talmud (bRosh ha-Shanah 20b) is quoted to show that even Samuel, the great Babylonian sage (early third century CE), was ignorant in parts of this science. A lengthy passage of Palestinian Talmud (yRosh ha-Shanah 2:6, 58b) is then quoted, discussing who has the authority of making calendar decisions. Finally, the author dismisses the authority of those who determine the calendar on the basis of the molad and the Four Gates. In Stern's book on the calendar controversy, this is the is the first of two versions of the text. This presents what can be read in the fragment extant. The second version is a reconstruction based on knowledge of the quoted Talmudic passages and some textual conjectures (pp. 416 - 425).

This polemical letter, in a manuscript of which only one sheet has been preserved (T-S 8K6), shares features in common with Letters 1 and 2 of the Letters Miscellany (PGPID 34551-3), and may well be by the same author. Like Letters Miscellany, this letter focuses on technical aspects of ben Meir’s calendar. Iit uses the era of Destruction, and it verifies its computation by running it through a long period of past years. The author calls his addressee, somewhat unusually, ‘my sage’ and ‘my scholar’. It also goes through and refutes a list of numbered Palestinian arguments. All three texts share in common the tendency of attributing absurd calendrical opinions to their opponent in order to refute them easily.

One of two manuscripts of ben Meir's first letter regarding the calendar controversy of 921/22 CE. (The other one is ENA 2556.2 + Bodl. Heb. f. 26/1-6.) Writes from Palestine to Baghdad. Of this manuscript of ben Meir’s First Letter, only two folios have been preserved: T-S 8K8 and T-S 8K7 (consecutively, and in this order). Stern suggests that there are 6 other, missing folios, in this manuscript (Stern, pp. 268 –278).

Provides minimal information on the calendar. Perhaps intended as a aid for those who were already knowledgable about calendar calculations. Includes the Palestinian calendar rule of 641–642 and treats it as normative. Given its practical orientation, this manual provides strong evidence that the calendar of ben Meir was in use for a long time after the controversy of 921/2CE.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. There is mention of the Qaraites and Ben Me'ir, suggesting that it might have to do with the calendar controversy. There is also mention of sums of money and entering a place that is referred to as Dār al-ʿIlm (not necessarily identical with the Qaraite institution in Jerusalem).