Sephardic Manuscript Haggadah

The Haggadah is the booklet containing the narrative and the order of the Passover Seder, read within the family on the first evening of the festival to recount the Exodus from Egypt, in accordance with the obligation to transmit this event to future generations. Its domestic function and the iconographic freedom it enjoys have made it, since the Middle Ages, a richly illustrated book. Sephardic haggadot, copied and illuminated in Spain before the expulsion of 1492, frequently open with full-page cycles of biblical images preceding the text, illustrating history from the Creation or the patriarchs through to the Exodus. They rank among the masterpieces of the medieval Hebrew book.