Sacred Books: A Story of Jewish Heritage from Afghanistan

“Touching and holding books allows people to come into contact with immaterial values. By touching and holdings scriptures, they feel like they can touch divinity.” — Dr. James W. Watts

Figure 1: Image still from Rob Schultheis’s video, captured in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in February 1998. © Museum of the Bible

The Soviet-era helicopter banked hard over the Bamiyan valley in the central highlands of Afghanistan as Rob Schultheis peered through the open door. The harsh winter’s snow still blanketed the giant Bamiyan Buddhas below while the helicopter gasped for height. Rob wasn’t sure they would stay airborne. It was February 1998 and Rob had just helped deliver medical supplies to local Hazaras—a persecuted ethnic minority that was then surrounded by Taliban forces. The previous day, a Hazara leader in Bamiyan took a moment to show Rob a sacred book. He held out a small Hebrew book, saying, “There were Buddhists here; there were Jews here.” Rob didn’t realize it yet, but he was looking at the earliest Hebrew book ever discovered.

Sacred books hold special status across the Abrahamic religions. Greek Orthodox Christians kiss their Bibles and Jews joyfully celebrate the Torah Scroll when it’s carried out for communal reading. Muslims revere the Qur’an wholeheartedly and, as Rob saw with the Hazara leader in Bamiyan, a Muslim leader protected a Jewish book because he thought it might be sacred. He was right.

The Afghan Liturgical Quire

This small book contains Sabbath morning prayers, devotional poetry for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, and a Passover Haggadah that was mysteriously written upside down. A team of scholars and scientists, led by Professor Malachi Beit-Arie (in blessed memory) and Dr. Rahel Fronda, determined that this sacred book was likely written during the 700s. This makes it the oldest Hebrew book ever discovered (not to be confused with older Hebrew manuscripts in scroll form, like the Dead Sea Scrolls). It’s also the world’s oldest Passover Haggadah, which is a sacred text in Judaism.

Figure 2: The Haggadah section of the ALQ, knowingly bound upside down, with Gensis 1:1 written sideways underneath the Haggadah text.

The creators of this sacred book selected passages from Chronicles, Isaiah, Proverbs, Psalms, and Samuel to form the prayers, making someone’s personal “siddur” (Hebrew for “order” for prayer). On one page, someone wrote Genesis 1:1 sideways, underneath the text of the Haggadah. Like Leonardo Da Vinci perfecting his Mona Lisa across 16 years, this handwritten book showcases many layers just waiting to be unlocked by its beholder.

It was written and compiled by at least five different people during the 700s. One person wrote the Haggadah, another person wrote the morning prayers, and three or four different people wrote the poems. This small book of prayers was a collaborative effort, perhaps created within a single family 1,300 years ago.

What’s with the Name?

The Afghan Jewish community calls this small book the “Afghan Siddur,” but Hebrew manuscript scholars gave it its technical name—the Afghan Liturgical Quire (ALQ). “Afghan” because it’s connected to Afghanistan; “liturgical” because it contains different types of blessings and prayers; and “quire” because of the book’s particular structure.

Generally, a medieval manuscript in book form is called a “codex.” A codex often has “folios,” “bifolios,” and multiple “quires” (a series of 4 to 6 bifolios folded in half). Most surviving codices have multiple quires. The folds of each quire are lined up, one on top of another, and sewn together at the spine. However, the ALQ contains only a single quire, stacking 10 bifolios and 5 folios into one gathering of parchment. Depending on the community of origin, single-quire codices like this typically point to a creation date in late antiquity or the early medieval period (200–800).

Figure 3: Folios and bifolios combine to make a quire. Most codices have multiple quires.

The Jews of Central Asia

Jewish heritage in Afghanistan may sound like an impossibility, but significant traces remain. Archaeologists discovered dozens of medieval Jewish tombstones in Jam, Afghanistan, mostly dating to the 1100s and early 1200s. The dated tombstones abruptly stop in 1221, when Genghis Khan conquered the region and folded it into the Mongol Empire.

Figure 4: Medieval Jewish tombstone from Jam, Afghanistan. Recovered by Dr. David Thomas and other archaeologists in 2005. © MJAP / David Thomas + 2005, all rights reserved.

A portion of the “Afghan Genizah” discovery, called the “Bamiyan Papers,” records the activities of a Jewish merchant named Judah ben Daniel in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, during the 1000s. Judah ben Daniel must have viewed the great Bamiyan Buddhas often and worked with Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian Sogdian traders from across the Silk Roads. Spices from India, frankincense from the trees of Yemen, silk from China, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan; the religions and goods of the ancient world converged in Afghanistan for millennia.     

Today, the Afghan Jewish community lives in the United States and Israel, but they still maintain cultural connections to Afghanistan. Though there were difficult times, Jewish leaders who were born in Afghanistan look back on their time there with fondness. Some of them played tennis with the sons of the King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, held picnics in the King’s palace gardens, and took trips to Bamiyan to view the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Figure 5: A group of friends from Kabul travel to Bamiyan and reach the top of the larger Bamiyan Buddha in 1962. Courtesy of Mark (Mordecai) Abraham

Imagine the joy the Afghan Jewish community felt then, when they heard an old Jewish book had been found in Afghanistan. In 2022, one Afghan Jewish leader told Museum of the Bible, “This book shows the world that we are here, that we exist. It is the mother of all prayer books!” The unbelievable story of the ALQ is revitalizing the Afghan Jewish community and recalling Afghanistan’s history of diversity.

But what if the ALQ, the oldest-known Hebrew book, remained inaccessible to Afghan Jews, to all Jews? If not for the kindness of Afghanistan officials who partnered with Museum of the Bible, this sacred book could have been inaccessible to the community that created it.

A Sacred Book Builds a Bridge

The ALQ is now held in Washington, DC, at Museum of the Bible thanks to a partnership between the museum and Afghanistan officials from the democratically elected government (2002–2021). Afghanistan officials and the museum followed a “human rights-based approach to cultural heritage,” recognizing Museum of the Bible as the custodian of the ALQ to ensure Jews, especially Afghan Jews, could safely access and enjoy the oldest-known Hebrew book.

Figure 6: Members of Congregation Anshei Shalom of Jamaica Estates handle a replica of the ALQ and discuss its importance after the Purim service in 2023. © Museum of the Bible

The partnership includes three institutional representatives of Afghan Jews: The Afghan Jewish Foundation, the American Sephardi Federation, and Congregation Anshei Shalom of Jamaica Estates—the only active Afghan synagogue in the world.

In divisive times, an old Jewish book has brought people together. Jews, Museum of the Bible, and the people of Afghanistan revere sacred books, and together we celebrate the story of collaboration that preserves the ALQ. As one Afghan Jewish leader said, “This is tikkun olam [repairing the world].”

Come and See!

The ALQ will be exhibited in Sacred Words: Revealing the Earliest Hebrew Book at Museum of the Bible, from September 24, 2024, to January 12, 2025. Don’t miss your chance to see it and learn more of its story.

This article is abbreviated from extensive research, which is thoroughly discussed in a forthcoming volume in the Brill series, Études sur le Judaïsme Medieval.

By Herschel Hepler, Associate Curator of Hebrew Manuscripts

Published October 31, 2024