Sephardic Manuscript Haggada

The Haggada is the booklet containing the narrative and order of the Passover Seder, read in family on the first night of the festival to tell the story of the Exodus, in accordance with the obligation to transmit this event to the generations. Its domestic function and the iconographic freedom it enjoyed made it, from the Middle Ages onward, a richly illustrated book. Sephardic haggadot, copied and illuminated in Spain before the expulsion of 1492, frequently open with cycles of biblical images in full page preceding the text, illustrating the story from Creation or the patriarchs to the Exodus. They rank among the masterpieces of medieval Hebrew books.