Al-Ousta Codex

Sapir heaps lavish praises on the codex: ...Also the precious Bible codex, the peculiar treasure of kings, in an extraordinarily beautiful handwriting upon parchment, which he (al-Ousta) had brought with him from Egypt or from Persia, it also was sold by his children's children in their poverty[7]The first volume of the book is adorned with an illuminated frontispiece and other decorative pages, showing a printed seven-branched candlestick and its appurtenances, using an old squeezing technique to produce a relief effect with gold tracings.

The beginning of the codex contains a genealogical record thought to belong to its original owner, Sar-Shalom the nasi, who traces his lineage back to King David and to the First Man, Adam.

However, Sapir, in counting the number of generations that had passed since Sar-Shalom's ancestor, Bostanai, reasons that the time-frame given for this man who acquired the codex would have roughly been accurate.

[11] According to Sapir, the author of the colophon has highlighted only 5 Hebrew characters, which are כתב מש and which letters have the numerical value of 762.

[13] The problem with these configurations is that it would put the writing of the codex much earlier than the period that is known for the style of Sephardic script used in the manuscript.

This led Sapir to conclude that the date may actually refer to the time of the giving of the Masorah (Masoretic text), or to something else, but not necessarily to the writing of the codex.

They were philanthropists who built several synagogues (one bearing the name "al-Ousta') and a public bath in San'a to be used by the Jewish community there.