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Country
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US
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Language of name of institution
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eng
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Contact information: postal address
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Lutnick Library - Haverford College Libraries, 370 Lancaster Avenue, 19041 Haverford, PA
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Contact information: phone number
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001 (610) 896 1161
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Contact information: email
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hc-special@haverford.edu
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Reference number
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HC.MC-838
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Type of reference number
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Archival reference number
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Title (official language of the state)
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J. Rendel Harris collection
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Language of title
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eng
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Creator / accumulator
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J. Rendel Harris
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Date note
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13th century/1890
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Language(s)
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ara
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heb
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lad
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lat
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Extent
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80 storage units
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Scope and content
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This collection is composed of manuscripts written in Hebrew (21 manuscripts), Samaritan (1), Syriac (7), Arabic (5), Ethiopic (6), Armenian (3), and Latin (6). The Hebrew manuscripts include Bibles and biblical texts, Torah and Esther scrolls, prayerbooks, liturgical works, and commentaries.
One of the highlights of this collection is a Masoretic Bible dated from 1266 and produced in Spain, most likely in Tudela, Burgos, or Soria (RH 1). The manuscript is written in square Sephardic Script with a reed pen and contains both greater and lesser Masoretic notes. According to Halperin (2014), this is one of three 13th-century Masoretic bibles from the Iberian Peninsula which includes identical decorations of micrography on every opening quire. At the end of the book of Psalms is a stylised harp, which is, according to Stern (2007), an allusion to the harp of David.
This collection also includes two fragments of a Bible (2 Kings 10:19 - 12:2 and 2 Kings 25:25 ad fin) produced in Elvas, Portugal, in 1467 (RH 10), written in square Sephardic script by a scribe named Samuel al-Faruni. Fol. 2 includes a later Ladino inscription with the name of a former owner: "This book belongs to Samuel ben Cohen (…?) ben Sil and was preserved by Ismael" (Moita 2017).
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Archival history
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This collection is mainly composed of manuscripts purchased by J. Rendel Harris in Egypt, Palestine, and Lebanon. They were gifted to the Library of Haverford College by Harris and his personal friend Walter Wood. The original collection contained 47 manuscripts.
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Administrative / Biographical history
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James Rendel Harris (Plymouth, England, 1852 - Philadelphia, PA, 1941) was a scholar and curator of manuscripts. After graduating as a Wrangler in Mathematics from Cambridge, he went on to lecture in Mathematics at Clare College at Cambridge before becoming a Professor of New Testament Greek at Johns Hopkins from 1882 to 1885. Isaac Sharpless recruited Harris to go to Haverford, where he remained from 1886 to 1891, serving as Professor of Ecclesiastical History.
Harris was instrumental to the creation of the Haverford College Studies which began publication in 1889. He also contributed to the Haverford College libraries with the donation of the Gustav Baur collection in 1889. Harris took a leave of absence from Haverford during the 1889 school year during which time he gathered the manuscripts that gave rise to this collection.
In 1892 Harris began teaching again at Cambridge, however, he soon left the position to become the head of Woodbrooke, an education settlement started by George Cadbury to train young Quakers. Harris became curator of manuscripts at the John Rylands Library in Manchester beginning in 1918. While affected by a progressively impairing blindness starting in the 1920s, Harris continued his research until his death in 1941.
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(source: Isaak, David Conners, Anderies, John et al. 2012. J. Rendel Harris collection, 1200-1890)
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System of arrangement
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Materials are arranged alphabetically by correspondence.
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Access, restrictions
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The collection is open for research use
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Author of the description
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Carla Vieira, 2022
