ABELE (legg. Akele) SIJJÖN. — “Those who mourn for Zion,” among the Jews.
The term appears after the Arab conquest of Palestine (634–40), but the Talmüd already speaks of people who, after the fall of the Second Temple, renounced meat and wine as a sign of mourning. On the 9th of ’abh they went with their fellow believers to weep over the ruins of the Temple.
Under Arab rule, several A. settled in Jerusalem, where they formed an association of an ascetic-mystical character that lived in expectation of the coming of the Messiah. The Pesiqtā rabbati (around 545) speaks of them (ed. M. Friedmann, Vienna 1880, p. 158) with particular veneration. The abēlē beth ’olamiu or abēlē ha-hēkhēl (those who mourn for the Temple) led a contemplative life and lived on offerings from the diaspora. The sect lasted from the middle of the 7th century to the end of the 11th. When the sect as such ceased to exist, the mourning did not cease. In Germany, in the following centuries, there lived “those who mourn for Zion and Jerusalem,” and they always dressed in black. Some Yemeni Jews, as well as certain Karaites who had settled in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 9th century, also abstained from meat and wine.