Thick volume, semi-cursive Oriental script, vocalized. The volume contains all the book of Neviim and Ketuvim, including the Megillot, with a Neo-Aramaic translation. Only Shir HaShirim is written in the original, with no translation (and unvocalized).
After the Book of Kings, colophon of the writer: “I wrote this Neviim, the Books of Yehoshua, Shoftim, Shmuel I, Shmuel II, Melachim I, Melachim II… I, Leve son of Chatan…. wrote the Neviim, 1922”.

At end of volume, after conclusion of Divre HaYamim, appears a chart of “year-round haftarot, in accordance with the rite of all the Sephardic communities”, followed by a colophon: “Completed… 1924, in the merit of Abraham and Sarah”.

Another manuscript by the present scribe is Krupp Ms. 1330, including various works in Hebrew and Neo-Aramaic, including the translation of Shir HaShirim (which does not appear in the present anthology). At the end is written: “The Book of Shir HaShirim is concluded, translated from Targum to Iranian Kurdish. Written by my brother Levi son of Yechiel (Chatan)…” (the manuscript concludes with colophons of the above scribe: “Leve son of… Chatan… Rosh Chodesh Tevet… 1924…”, “Leve… son of Chatan…”).

The translation is to Neo-Aramaic, or Judeo-Kurdish, which is effectively a modern Aramaic dialect. Upon the Arab conquest and Islamization of the Middle East in the 7th century, the population gradually began to speak in Arabic, nearly entirely supplanting Aramaic, which survived only in small communities, mainly among the Jews of Kurdistan. Neo-Aramaic manuscripts are very rare.

The Jews of Kurdistan are the Mizrahi Jewish communities from the geographic region of Kurdistan, roughly covering parts of northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey. Kurdish Jews lived as closed ethnic communities until they were expelled from Arab and Muslim states from the 1940s–1950s onward. The community largely spoke Judeo-Aramaic. As Kurdish Jews natively adhere to Judaism and originate from the Middle East, Mizrahi Hebrew is used for liturgy. Many Kurdish Jews, especially the ones who hail from Iraq, went through a Sephardic Jewish blending during the 18th century.

In the present-day, the overwhelming majority of Kurdistan’s Jewish population resides in the State of Israel, with the community’s presence coming as a direct result of either the Jewish exodus from Muslim states or the making of Aliyah by those remaining in the following decades. The Times of Israel reported on September 30, 2013: “Today, there are almost 200,000 Kurdish Jews in Israel, about half of whom live in Jerusalem. There are also over 30 agricultural villages throughout the country that were founded by Kurdish Jews.