said: "Evel is a treatise of the Mishnah in which are contained the regulations concerning mourning for the dead and most of the halakhic ordinances of the third chapter of Mo'ed Katan.
[4] Numerous fragments of the so-called "small" Evel treatise have been preserved, notably in Isaac ibn Ghayyat's Halakhot, in Nahmanides' Torat ha-Adam, in Tanya, and in Jacob b. Asher's Tur.
[5] To judge from these fragments, the small Evel contained regulations concerning visitation of the sick, treatment of the dying, laying out of the corpse, mourning for the dead, arrangement of graves, and collection of the bones ("ossilegium"), which was customary among the Jews as well as among the Greeks.
This treatise, which is the oldest collection of halakhot on mourning customs, was compiled in Palestine; and, according to Brüll,[6] R. Eleazar Bar Zadok, who lived in Lod at the time of Gamaliel II, prepared its core.
It was then amplified, enriched, and revised by R. Ḥiyya, but as it was known to a small circle only, it was replaced by the later treatise Evel Rabbati, which borrowed much from it.
The work was comparatively widely circulated at the time of the later geonim, since reference to a passage in it is made in a question addressed to Sherira and Hai Gaon from a distant region.
[9] The tractate contains almost complete instructions as to the treatment of the dying and the dead, from the commencement of the death-agony to the arrangement of the grave which receives the remains.