• Frontmatter,
• Table of Contents,
• List of Plates,
• Table of Transliteration,
• Preface,
• Introduction to The Princetion Classics Edition,
• 1. The Background of The Sabbatian Movement,
• 2. The Beginnings of Sabbatai Sevi (1626 - 1664),
• 3. The Beginnings of The Movement in Palestine (1665),
• 4. The Movement Up to Sabbatai's Imprisonment in Gallipoli (1665 - 1666),
• 5. The Movement in Europe (1666),
• 6. The Movement in The East and The Center at Gallipoli Until Sabbatai's Apostasy (1666),
• 7. After The Apostasy (1667 - 1668),
• 8. The Last Years of Sabbatai Sevi (1668 - 1676),
• Bibliography,
• Index,

Gershom Scholem stands out among modern thinkers for the richness and power of his historical imagination. A work widely esteemed as his magnum opus, Sabbatai ¿evi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai ¿evi was an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey who aroused a fervent following that spread over the Jewish world after he declared himself to be the Messiah. The movement suffered a severe blow when ¿evi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai ¿evi details ¿evi's rise to prominence and stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and passion. This edition contains a new introduction by Yaacob Dweck that explains the scholarly importance of Scholem's work to a new generation of readers.

Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was one of the most important Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century and the father of the academic study of Jewish mysticism. He was a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Yaacob Dweck is associate professor of history and Judaic studies at Princeton University. He is the author of The Scandal of Kabbalah (Princeton).