Joseph Zabara has only in recent times received the consideration justly
due to him. Yet his "Book of Delight," finished about the year 1200, is
more than a poetical romance. It is a golden link between folk-literature
and imaginative poetry. The style is original, and the framework of the
story is an altogether fresh adaptation of a famous legend. The anecdotes
and epigrams introduced incidentally also partake of this twofold quality.
The author has made them his own, yet they are mostly adapted rather than
invented. Hence, the poem is as valuable to the folklorist as to the
literary critic. For, though Zabara's compilation is similar to such
well-known models as the "Book of Sindbad," the _Kalilah ve-Dimnah_, and
others of the same class, yet its appearance in Europe is half a century
earlier than the translations by which these other products of the East
became part of the popular literature of the Western world. At the least,
then, the "Book of Delight" is an important addition to the scanty store of
the folk-lore records of the early part of the thirteenth century. The
folk-lore interest of the book is, indeed, greater than was known formerly,
for it is now recognized as a variant of the Solomon-Marcolf legend. On
this more will be said below,

As a poet and as a writer of Hebrew, Joseph Zabara's place is equally
significant. He was one of the first to write extended narratives in Hebrew
rhymed prose with interspersed snatches of verse, the form invented by
Arabian poets, and much esteemed as the medium for story-telling and for
writing social satire. The best and best-known specimens of this form of
poetry in Hebrew are Charizi's _Tachkemoni_, and his translation of Hariri.
Zabara has less art than Charizi, and far less technical skill, yet in him
all the qualities are in the bud that Charizi's poems present in the
fullblown flower. The reader of Zabara feels that other poets will develop
his style and surpass him; the reader of Charizi knows of a surety that in