The Tashqil, a Scribe's Name Written Down the Column

Samaritan scribes developed a device that has no close parallel in the neighbouring manuscript traditions. In a Torah written in columns, a scribe could arrange the text so that particular letters fell into alignment in the vertical space between two columns, and those aligned letters, read down the page, spelled out a message: the name of the scribe, the name of the person the copy was made for, a date, and a formula. The device is called the tashqil, and it turns the layout of the page into a signature.

It is a considerable feat of planning. The wording of the Torah is fixed and cannot be adjusted to make the letters fall where they are wanted, so the scribe has to control the width of the columns and the spacing of the words across many pages at once in order to land the right letters in the right places. A tashqil is therefore evidence of a highly developed craft, and it is also a documentary source: it dates and attributes manuscripts that would otherwise be anonymous, which is exactly the information a catalogue of Samaritan manuscripts most needs.

The habit says something about how the community regards the copying of the Torah. The text itself is not altered by a single letter; what carries the scribe is the shape of the page around it. A colophon at the end of a book announces its maker in the ordinary way. A tashqil hides him inside the geometry of the book and leaves him to be found.