Halakha · Rambam (R' Moshe ben Maimon / Maimonides) · 12th c. · Fostat · Codex · Autograph · Mishna Commentary · Menorah Diagram

פירוש המשניות להרמב״ם — סדרי נזיקין וקדשים, בכתב יד קדשו, עם ציור המנורה

Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah — autograph of Sedarim Nezikin & Kodashim, with the famous Menorah diagram

Fostat (Old Cairo), 1167–1168 · Bodleian Library, University of Oxford — MS Pococke 295 (Neubauer 404)

Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah, in his own hand — the autograph of Sedarim Nezikin (Damages) and Kodashim (Holy Things), copied by him in Fostat in 1167–1168 as he refined the text he had originally completed in 1168. The most famous page in the codex is Maimonides' diagram of the Menorah of the Temple — on image 378 in the viewer — drawn by his own hand: he depicts the seven branches as STRAIGHT, not curved as commonly imagined, with the goblets oriented downward — a layout he understood to reflect the precise tradition he had received and one that has shaped halakhic discussion of the Menorah's form ever since. The volume also contains diagrams of the Temple plan and corrective marginal notes by Maimonides on the text. Held at the Bodleian Library (MS Pococke 295; Neubauer 404), digitized by the Polonsky Foundation Project. A downloadable PDF facsimile is also available.