Overview

The Aleppo Codex is the most authoritative surviving manuscript of the Masoretic text, the traditional, fully vocalised and annotated Hebrew Bible. It was written in Tiberias, the heartland of Masoretic learning, around 920-930 CE. The scribe Solomon ben Buya'a wrote the consonantal letters; Aaron ben Asher, the last of the great Tiberian Masoretes, added the vowel-points, the cantillation marks and the tiny marginal notes (the Masorah) that safeguard the exact text. The result was regarded for a thousand years as the most exact copy of the Hebrew Bible in existence.

Known to the Jews of Aleppo as the Keter, "the Crown," it was guarded there for some six centuries. In the anti-Jewish rioting of 1947 the synagogue that housed it was burned, and when the codex reached Israel in 1958 about two-fifths of its leaves were gone, including almost the whole Torah. The surviving portion, roughly 295 of an estimated 487 leaves, is now kept and displayed at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls.