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.
Jerusalem, National Library of Israel MS 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 ...
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hunt. Add. E
Early in the sixteenth century, an old ilan was acquired by the Italian humanist and philosopher Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (1472–1532). The text it bore was the idiosyncratic introduction to the sefirot Iggeret ...
Klau Library 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 ...
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 ...
Uppsala University Library, MS O Hebr 33:3
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] ...
The Magnificent Parchment - MS Hunt. Add. D
Oxford, BL, 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 (London, BL, MS Or. ...