The Keter Aram Tzova (Aleppo Codex) כֶּתֶר אֲרַם צוֹבָה
The most exact of the codices of the Tanakh: Tiberias, around 930, vowelled and massed by Aharon ben Asher. Maimonides held it in his hands and wrote: upon it all rely.
The scribe Shlomo ben Buya'a copied the letters, and Aharon ben Asher—last of the Tiberian dynasty of Masoretes—set the vowels, the cantillation, and the Masoretic notes. So, around 930 in Tiberias, was born the book generations would call simply the Keter—the Crown.
Its road: Jerusalem—Crusader booty in 1099—ransom—Fustat. There Maimonides used it and set down in the Mishneh Torah: the codex upon which all rely, for Ben Asher corrected it. From the fourteenth century the Keter lay in the crypt of Aleppo's great synagogue.
In December 1947 the synagogue burned; the Keter was thought lost, but the community saved and hid it for ten years. In 1958 it was smuggled out through Turkey and handed to President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Of some 487 leaves, 294 arrived: nearly the whole Torah is missing. Today the Keter stands in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, and editions of the Tanakh "after the Keter" are checked against it leaf by leaf.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Sefer Torah 8:4 — “the codex upon which all rely… for Ben Asher corrected it”
Scholarship
- The Ben-Zvi Institute: the Keter described and published — Tiberias c. 930; 294 leaves of c. 487; the road to Jerusalem
Basis: documents and evidence.