page_title: Baladi-rite prayer
section_title: Textual development
hierarchical_section_title: Baladi-rite prayer / Textual development
caption_attribution_description: English: Siddur written in Yemen
context_page_description: The Baladi-rite Prayer is the oldest known prayer-rite used by Yemenite Jews, transcribed in a tiklāl in Yemenite Jewish parlance.
  It contains the prayers used by Israel for the entire year, as well as the format prescribed for the various blessings recited. Until the 16th century, all of Yemen's Jewry made use of this one rite. Older Baladi-rite prayer books were traditionally compiled in the Babylonian supralinear punctuation, although today, all have transformed and strictly make use of the Tiberian vocalization. The text, however, follows the traditional Yemenite punctuation of Hebrew words.
context_section_description: Dr. Moshe Gavra who examined more than 700 Yemenite siddurim has concluded that there have always existed differences between siddurim used in Yemen, just as there exist differences between various Sephardic and Ashkenazi siddurim. While the ancient format of the Amidah may have seen little changes since its enactment by the latter prophets, the history of the Yemenite Baladi-rite prayer book—as can be said about every Siddur—is a history of recensions and later interpolations, with the addition of elements taken from the Siddur of Rabbi Saadia Gaon and of Rabbi Amram Gaon, the printed Sephardic siddurs, as well as elements taken from liturgies found originally in the Land of Israel. Most of these changes began to make their way into the current Baladi-rite prayer book over a two-hundred year period, from the time of Rabbi Yiḥya Bashiri (d. 1661) who published his Tiklāl Bashiri in 1618 (a copy of which was made and published under the name Tiklāl Qadmonim) to the time of Rabbi Yihya Saleh (d. 1805), the latter of whom incorporating in the Baladi-rite version elements taken from Kabbalah, as prescribed by Isaac Luria (Ari), as well as certain liturgical poems taken from the Sephardic prayer books. In the title page of one Yemenite Siddur completed in 1663 by the notable scribe and kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac b. Abraham Wannah, the copyist makes note of the fact that, aside from the regular customs of the people of Yemen, some of the entries in his Siddur have been culled "from the customs of the people of Spain who have it as their practice to add in the prayers the Tikūn Ha-geshem and the Tikūn Ha-ṭal (special emendations made for rain and for dew so that they may not be withheld), as well as the Tikūnei Shabbat Malkah as is practised by the people of the Land of Israel," i.e., the Psalms readings beginning with לכו נרננה, etc., and the liturgy לכה דודי, followed by בר יוחאי, and יגדל אלהים חי. Originally, the practice was to begin the Sabbath prayer on the night of the Sabbath by reciting only “mizmor shir le'yom ha-shabbath” (Ps. 92). The first recorded mentioning of Tikūn Ha-ṭal (said before the Mussaf-prayer on the first day of Passover) in any extant Yemenite prayer book appeared only in 1583. Included in the Tikūnei Shabbat book were the special readings for the nights of Shavu'ot and Hoshanna Rabba.
  The texts of old Yemenite Siddurs copied by Rabbi Yihye Bashiri are an invaluable source for comparing the variae lectiones (Textual variations) of liturgy before the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud. For example, in all older Yemenite Siddurs copied by Bashiri is found the version גואל ישראל (He who redeems Israel) in the second blessing after Qiryat Shema in the evening prayer and on the night of Passover, that is, in the present-progressive tense instead of in the past tense (גאל ישראל), although the requirement made by Rava in the Talmud (Pesaḥim 117b) calls for saying it in the past tense. Scholars point out that the Yemenite practice was the original custom in Yemen before Rava's interdict, the memorial of which also being brought down in the Jerusalem Talmud.
caption: Siddur written in Yemen showing Sephardic influence
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