Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

À bout de souffle (Breathless, film, Godard), music of, Solal, Martial A‘arokh Mehallel Nivi (I Will Compose Praise with My Words, poem, Ben Ḥassin), Ben Ḥassin, DavidAaron, spiritual relationship to Moses, Shiʽa and the JewsAaron of Baghdad, Southern Italy and BariAaron ben Aaron, Jebel NafusaAaron ben Amram, Aaron ben Amram, Court Jews, Joseph ben PhinehasAaron ben Asher, SyriaAaron ben Elijah of Nicomedia, Bible ExegesisAaron ben Jeshua see‘Abū ’l-Faraj Hārūn ibn FarajAaron ben Joseph, Kalām, Bible ExegesisAaron ben Mashiaḥ, Judeo-Persian LiteratureAaron ben Me’ir (gaon…

Abū ‘Imrān al-Fāsī, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm (Abraham ben Nathan)Abū ‘Imrān al-Tiflīsī, Malik al-Ramlī, Abū ʿImrān al-TiflīsīAbū ‘Isā al-Isfahānī, Iran/Persia, Isfahan, Messianism, Shiʽa and the Jews, Abū ʿIsā of Isfahan, Hamadan, YūdghānAbū Isḥāq seeIbn al-Ḥarīzī, AbrahamAbū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn ‘Aṭā’ seeIbn ‘Aṭā’Abu Iyad (Palestinian terrorist), Romano, JosephAbū Ja‘far Ibn Bābawayh, Polemics (Muslim-Jewish)Abū ’l-Jaysh Mujāhid (Taifa King), DeniaAbū ’l-Karam al-Dārānī, BukharaAbū ’l-Kathīr Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā’ (d. ca. 932), Abū 'l-Kathīr Yaḥyā ibn Za…

Ādurbād ī Ēmēdān, Zoroastrians, (Jewish relations with)adventure stories, translations into Hebrew, Literature, Hebrew Prose (medieval) The Adventures of Tintin (film, Spielberg), Elmaleh, GadAdvertisement Foundation (Istanbul), Medina, Cefi (Jeffi)advertising sector  in Turkey, Medina, Cefi (Jeffi)  Jewish involvement in, Acıman, Eli, Barouh, N. Izidor, Barouh, Yakup, Scialom, Sedat Adwā’ ‘alā ’l-Ṣahyūniyya (Illuminations on Zionism, al-Sa‘danī), Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism/Anti-ZionismAegean Sea, coastal region, Jewish communities in, Aegean Sea,…

​ Akhbār Baghdād (Chronicle of Baghdad, Nathan ha-Bavlī), Yeshivot in Babylonia/Iraq, Joseph ben Phinehas, Kohen Ṣedeq ben Joseph Gaon, Nathan ha-Bavlī on Bar Saṭya, Bar Saṭya, Joseph ben Jacob on exilarchate appointments, Baghdad on seating arrangements in yeshivot, Alluf Akhbār Majmū‘a (Arab chronicle), Al-Andalus, Muslim conquests and the Jews, Seville akhnif (cloak), Clothing, Jewelry and Make-up Aki Yerushalaim: Revista Kulturala Djudeo-Espanyola (periodical, Israel), Shaul, Moshe Akiva (The Hope, newspaper, Turkey), Turkish RepublicAkka (Morocco)  Jewish com…

“Alexandria, Egypt: Modern” (article, Elijah Bekhor Ḥazzan), Ḥazzan, Elijah BekhorAlexandru Moruzi (prince of Moldavia), Romania (Ottoman)Aley (Lebanon), Jewish community in, synagogues of, Lebanon ‘Aley Nahar (Harari-Raful), Harari-Raful, Nissim ben IsaiahAlfakhar, Judah ben Joseph, SevilleAlfandari, Aaron ben Moses, Alfandari, Aaron ben Moses, Rosanes (Rosales) FamilyAlfandari, David, Alfandari FamilyAlfandari, David ben Abraham, Bible ExegesisAlfandari, Elijah, Alfandari FamilyAlfandari, Elijah ben Jacob, Alfandari FamilyAlfandari, Ḥayyim, Qimḥi/Qamḥ…

‘Alī Burghul (ruler of Tripoli), Khalfon, Abraham‘Alī ibn Abī al-Ṭālib (fourth caliph, Muḥammad’s cousin and son-in-law, r. 656-661), Muslim conquests and the Jews, Shiʽa and the Jews, Shiʽa and the Jews, Court Jews and Noah, Shiʽa and the Jews spiritual relationship to Muḥammad, Shiʽa and the Jews‘Alī ibn al-Furāt, Aaron ben Amram‘Alī ibn ‘Īsā (vizier), Cairo Geniza, Joseph ben Phinehas‘Alī ibn Mahdī, Messianism, Messianism‘Alī ibn Mujāhid, Ibn Yashūsh, Isaac (Abū Ibrāhīm) Ibn Qasṭār‘Alī ibn Mūsā al-Riḍā (8th Shī‘ī imam), Polemics (Muslim-Jewish), Mashhad‘Alī ibn Sulaymān…

​ ​Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), Alliance Israélite Universelle Network, Camondo, Abraham de, École Normale Israélite Orientale, Paris, Judeo-Spanish Literature, Education, Club des Intimes, Salonica, Fernandez, Isaac, Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, La Nation (Salonica), L’Aurore (Istanbul) activities   in Morocco, Casablanca, Morocco, Morocco   special status of Jews in Morocco requested, Dahan, Jacques  in Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Empire  social support, in Edirne, Edirne (Adrianople) alumni associations/graduates, Nahoum (Nahum), Haim (Ḥa…

Almosnino, Abraham, Almosnino, IsaacAlmosnino, Isaac, Almosnino, IsaacAlmosnino, Joseph, Serbia, Ibn Ḥayyim, Aaron ben AbrahamAlmosnino, Joseph ben Isaac, Belgrade, Almosnino, Joseph ben IsaacAlmosnino, Moses ben Baruch, Balkans, Judeo-Spanish Literature, Sephardi Jurisprudence in the Past Half-Millennium, Salonica (Thessaloniki; Selanik), Almosnino, Moses ben Baruch writings of, Almosnino, Moses ben BaruchAlmosnino, Samuel, Levi (Le-Vet Ha-Levi) Family, SalonicaAlmosnino family, Almosnino, Moses ben Baruch almoxarife (collector of revenues), Jews as,…

anti- dhimmī measures  in Fatimid caliphate, Egypt, Palestine, Tustarī Family in Mamluk Egypt, Egyptanti-European violence, in Casablanca (1906), Zagury, Yaḥyāanti-French violence, in Syria (1936), Syriaanti-Greek violence, in Istanbul, Turkish RepublicAnti-Jewish Leagues (Algeria), Oran ​anti-Jewish measures  in Algeria, Constantine, Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism of Almohads, Maimonides, Moses of Almoravids, Almoravids, Almoravids in al-Andalus, Al-Andalus, Spain, Niebla in Central Asia   Bukhara, Bukhara  Turkestan, Bukhara in the Crim…

​al-Andalus, Al-Andalus anti-dhimmi sentiments in, Ibn Naghrella, Samuel (Abū Ibrāhim Ismāʿīl) ben Joseph ha-Nagid anti-Jewish measures in, Al-Andalus, Spain, Niebla anti-Jewish violence in   in 1066, Al-Andalus    see alsoGranada  in 1391, Jaén Arab minority in, Al-Andalus Arabic tradition of, Barcelona Christian-Jewish relations in, Al-Andalus Christians in, Al-Andalus  dhimma laws in, Dhimma Jewish culture in, Al-Andalus, Al-Andalus, Sephardi (Sephardim), David (Abū ʾl-Ḥasan) ben al-Dayyan  in Almohad period, Al-Andalus  Arabic influences on, Co…

anti-Judaism/antisemitism  in Algeria, Algiers, Crémieux Decree, Mostaganem, Médéa, Hanin, Roger  fights against, Aboulker, Henri  French colonial period, Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism, Constantine Riots (1934), Algeria, Algeria, Oran, Tiaret (Tahert), Batna   Crémieux Decree, Tlemcen, Sidi Bel Abbès   Vichy regime, Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism, Algeria, Derrida, Jacques, Internment Camps (WWII), Internment Camps (WWII), Béchar (Colomb-Béchar)  Miliana, Miliana  Oran, Oran, Oran, Oran  Souk-Ahras, Souk-Ahras in Balkans, Ba…

​  affinities with Hebrew and Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic - History and Linguistic Description  and Bible exegesis, Bible Exegesis  ​Classical, Judeo-Arabic - History and Linguistic Description, Judeo-Arabic - History and Linguistic Description, Judeo-Arabic - History and Linguistic Description Egyptian-Sudanese, Sudan grammar   Basran school of, ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn ibn Faraj (Aaron b. Jeshua)  influences on Hebrew grammarians, Ibn Barūn, Isaac (Abū Ibrāhīm) ben Joseph, Ibn Janāḥ, Jonah (Abū ʾl-Walīd Marwān), Ibn Janāḥ, Jonah (Abū ʾl-Walīd Marwān)  Muslim scholars of,…

Arbib, Raffaele, Arbib familyArbib, Roberto, Arbib familyArbib, Ruben, Arbib familyArbib, Simon, Arbib, LilloArbib family, Arbib familyArbil (Iraq), Jewish community in, Arbilal-Arbīlī, Eli ben Zechariah, Gaon and GaonateArcady, Alexandre, Cinema, French, North African Jewish Actors and Characters in, France, Hanin, RogerArchaemenid period (550-330 B.C.E.), Judeo-Persian spoken in, Judeo-Persian languagearcheology, evidence from, of Jewish presence in ancient Tunisia, Tunisiaarchitecture  of Ahrida synagogue (Istanbul), Ahrida Synagogue (Balat) Persian, of …

Aaron ben Amram—or, as his name is given in Arabic sources, Hārūn ibn ʿImrān—lived in the second half of the ninth century and the first quarter of the tenth. He apparently began his career as a trader, as in one Arabic source he and his partner, Joseph ben Phinehas , are referred to as al-tujjār (the merchants). Eventually he became a jahbadh (banker). In this capacity, with responsibility for administering, remitting, and supplying funds, Aaron, together with the jahbadh Joseph ben Phinehas (Yūsuf ibn Fīnḥās), played a key role in the financial administration of the ʿAbbasid empire.The b…

In 921, a conflict erupted between the Babylonian yeshivot and the Palestinian yeshiva over the day on which the Passover holiday should be celebrated in 922. According to the Palestinians, the first day of Passover would be a Sunday, whereas the Babylonians held that it would be a Tuesday. The ensuing dispute was but one element in the ongoing struggle in the gaonic pe riod between the  Babylonian yeshivot and the Palestinian yeshiva for hegemony over the world’s Jewish communities. Both the calendar dispute and the overall conflict ended in a Babylonian victory.Aaron ben Me’ir led t…

Aaron ben Abraham Ḥakīmān, who lived toward the middle of the fourteenth century in Iraq, is known to us from his unique and unfortunately lacunal dīwān (poetry collection), containing 115 folios, in the Russian National Library (St. Petersburg), identified by Schirmann as MS 72 of the second Firkovitch collection (= no. 47406 in the JTS Schocken Institute online catalogue). From the variety of poetic compositions (including maqāmāt and muwashshaḥāt) in this dīwān, it is clear that Aaron was well acquainted with classical Arabic poetry, both Jewish and Muslim, and …

​Ashkelon (Israel)  in Fatimid period, and anti- dhimmī decrees of al-Ḥākim, Tustarī Family Jewish community in, Palestine, Palestine  deported from Jerusalem by Crusaders, Palestine  synagogues, Tazenakht mayor of, Abuḥaṣera, Barukh (Baba Barukh) Samaritans in, Samaritans under Muslim RuleAshkenazi, Abraham, Sephardi Jurisprudence in the Past Half-Millennium, Usque, SolomonAshkenazi, Abraham ben Raphael, Ashkenazi, Judah Ben JosephAshkenazi, Abraham Qalmanaqesh, Aben Ṣur FamilyAshkenazi, Azariah Joshua, IzmirAshkenazi, Behor, Ashkenazi, Bekhor (Beho…

astronomical tables  of Alfonso, X, Judah ben Moses ha-Kohen of Bar Ḥiyya, Abraham bar Ḥiyya of Zacuto, Science (Medieval)astronomy  Aristotelian influences on, Science (Medieval) calculations in, Ibn Matqa, Judah ben Solomon ha-Kohen, Ḥasan ben Mar Ḥasan observations of, used in religious calendars, Karaism study of   by Abraham of Toledo, Abraham of Toledo  by Ibn Tibbon, Jacob ben Machir, Ibn Tibbon, Jacob ben Machir writings on   by Dunash ben Tamīm, Dunash (Abū Sahl) ben Tamīm  by Ibn Ezra, Abraham, Ibn Ezra, Abraham (Abu Iṣḥāq), Ibn Ezra, Abraham (Abu Iṣḥāq)Astruc, I…

​ azharot (exhortations/hymns, poetical rendering of the 613 commandments), Sifre Miṣvot of al-Bargeloni, Sifre Miṣvot, Bargeloni, Isaac ben Reuben, al-, Edrehi (al-Darʿī), Moses b. Isaac and commandments, Sifre Miṣvot contemporary use of, Sifre Miṣvot of Elbaz, Samuel ben Judah, Elbaz, Samuel ben Judah halakhic content of, Sifre Miṣvot of Ibn Chiquitilla, Isaac, Ibn Chiquitilla, Isaac of Ibn Gabirol, Solomon, Ibn Gabirol, Solomon, Ibn Chiquitilla, Isaac, David ben Eleazar ibn Paquda  commentaries on, Amīnā, Benjamin ben Mishaʾel, Elisha ben Samuel (Rāghib)  rework…

Mordechai Abbadi, born in Aleppo in 1826, was a rabbi, judge, and distinguished sage. Renowned for his enormous command of legal and mystical literature, he reputedly composed his first novellae on the Talmud at the age of fifteen. His influence in the realm of Kabbala continued after his lifetime through the activities of his students Ḥayyim Saul Duwayk and Jacob Saul Duwayk (Duwayk Family), the latter of whom composed Abbadi's eulogy. Abbadi was influenced by the Bet El school of kabbalists (Bet El Kabbalists) and their quest for a purely Lurianic interpretation of Ka…

Shah ʿAbbās II (r. 1642–1666), the grandson of Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1587-1620), was the most competent monarch of the Ṣafavid dynasty of Iran next to his illustrious ancestor. Only eight and a half years old when he ascended the throne, ʿAbbās II asserted himself early by curbing the Turcoman (Qizilbāsh) tribes, the early “power behind the throne” of the Ṣafavid dynasty. He continued the effort to increase and concentrate the power of the crown and to maintain the frontiers of his empire. Like his grandfather, but not on the same scale, ʿAbbās I, enhanced Isfahan with new palaces and repairs…

Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1587–1629) is considered to have been the greatest monarch of the Ṣafavid dynasty. He ascended the throne of Iran at the age of sixteen during a turbulent political upheaval that included the murder of at least nine family members. Styled “the Great” for having consolidated the Iranian empire, ʿAbbās I enlarged and transformed his realm into one of the seventeenth century’s greatest powers, on a par with the Moghul empire under Akbar (r. 1556–1605), England under Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), a…

ʿ Abbās-nāma (The Book [Chronicle] of ʿAbbās) by Muḥammad Ṭāhir Waḥīd Qazwīnī is the most important Iranian source for the history of the reign of the Ṣafavid Shah ʿAbbās II (1642–1666), covering events up to 1663. It is the only Iranian source, however brief, on the persecution of Iranian Jewry between 1656 and 1661. According to the ʿ Abbās-nāma, two Jews from Isfahan aroused the ire of the Shīʽī Muslim community by their failure to wear the badges indicating that they were Jews (see ghiyār ), thereby posing a threat for unknowing Muslims of contact with impurity ( najāsat ). The Jewish com…

Ar. – ArabicAram. – AramaicBerb.  – BerberBul. – BulgarianChin. – ChineseCl. Ar.  – Classical ArabicColl. Ar.  – Colloquial ArabicEng. – EnglishFar. - FarsiFr. – FrenchGer. – GermanGk. – GreekHeb. – HebrewHun. – HungarianIce. – IcelandicIt. – ItalianJap. – JapaneseJud.-Ar. – Judeo-ArabicJud.-Berb.  – Judeo-BerberJud.-Gk. – Judeo-GreekJud.-It. – Judeo-ItalianJud.-Pers. – Judeo-PersianJud.-Sp. – Judeo-SpanishJud.-Taj. – Judeo-TajikKurd.  -  KurdishLat. – LatinMor. Ar. – Moroccan ArabicNor. – NorwegianOtt. Turk.  - Ottoman TurkishPers. - PersianPol. – PolishPort. – P…

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saba’, also called Ibn Sawdā’ (Ar. son of the black woman), was a Jewish convert to Islam during the caliphate of Uthmā̄n (r. 644–656). Classical Sunni sources portray him as a progenitor of Shiʿism. Both Shīʿī and Sunni sources relate that a Yemenite Jew named ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saba’ was the first person to publicly proclaim that Muḥammad was the expected messiah.  After Muḥammad’s death, however, he transferred his allegiance to ʿAlī, announcing that ʿAlī was the messiah who would return (Ar. rajʿa) at the end of time, riding on the clouds. The earliest Shīʿī groups, largely…

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām (d. 663/64), a member of the famous Jewish-Arab tribe of Banū Qaynuqā’ in Medina, was one of the  ṣaḥāba (Ar. companions), or original disciples, of Muḥammad. Given the primordial status of his conversion at the hand of Muḥ̣̣ammad, ʿAbd Allāh came to be portrayed as a Jewish convert mouthing sometimes identifiably Jewish material; for example, in the Qur’ān commentary of al-Ṭabarī (d. 923). ʿAbd  Allāh b. Salām eventually functioned as a symbol of the Islamization of the Jews, and as such the tales about him have been very long-lived…

Abū Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Ḥaqq al-Islāmī is known for having authored an anti-Jewish polemical pamphlet. The pamphlet, probably written between 1393 and 1396, is extant in four manuscripts, was reproduced twice in lithography as al-Sayf al-Mamdūd fī l-Radd ‘alā Aḥbār al-Yahūd (The Outstretched Sword for Refuting the Rabbis of the Jews), and was edited in 1998 under the same title. In the introduction the author informs us that he was from Ceuta in Morocco, and had converted from Judaism to Islam sixteen years earlier, along with other members of his household. Neither his o…

The second known Judeo-Persian chronicle, Kitāb-i Sar-Guzasht-i Kāshān dar Bāb-i ʿIbrī va Goyimi-yi Sānī (The Book of Events in Kashan Concerning the Jews; Their Second Conversion) by Bābāī ben Farhād, relates events pertaining to some of the Jewish communities of Iran between 1721 and 1731, a decade that witnessed the disintegration of the Safavid dynasty and Afghan and Russian invasions. A native of Kāshān, Bābāī ibn Farhād provides a detailed account of events in his community. In 1729 Ṭahmāsp Khān, the future Nādir Shāh (r. 1736–1747), demanded a considerable sum of m…

Armand Abécassis is a Moroccan-born French Judaic scholar and Bible commentator, and professor emeritus of comparative philosophy at the University Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux. He is the father of Eliette Abécassis, with whom he co-published Le Livre des passeurs. His novel Rue des Synagogues retraces his childhood and growing up in Morocco.Armand Abécassis, renowned French philosopher, Bible scholar and commentator, and interpreter of Judaism, was born April 4, 1933 in Casablanca, Morocco. He completed his education at the School of Young Je…

Eliette Abécassis is a French writer of Moroccan heritage. Her works differ considerably in theme and content, from her Qumran trilogy, a widely translated “theological thriller,” to provocative stories set in an Orthodox Jewish milieu, like La répudiée. Her novels Un heureux événement, Une affaire conjugale, and Sepharad are in part autobiographical. The recipient of both the Prix des Ecrivains croyants and the Prix Alberto Benveniste, she has, in addition to her fiction, co-written film scenarios, one adapted from one of her novels, and directed two short movies.Eliette Abécassi…

Israeli actress Yael Abecassis has starred in numerous Israeli and international feature films. Born in Israel in 1967 to a family of Moroccan background, she worked as a model and an on-screen presenter for children’s television, and began her movie career in 1991 with the French film Pour Sacha (dir. Alexander Arcady). Her role as Rivka in Amos Gitai’s Kadosh (1999) showed her capable of portraying a deep and tragic character and propelled her into stardom. Living in a stifling ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem, Rivka is unable to conceive. The un…

see Ibn DananNorman A. Stillman

The Aben Ṣur (Ibn Ṣūr, Ben Ṣur) family of kabbalists, religious scholars, and rabbinic jurists ( dayyanim) in the cities of Salé, Meknès, and Fez was one of the supporting pillars of the Jewish community of Morocco from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth. The family produced outstanding figures in many different areas of Jewish scholarship, including law, Kabbala, grammar, and Hebrew poetry. There is little clear-cut documentation about the family’s early history.  The rabbinic scholar and historian Jacob Moses Toledano (1880–1960) thought they were descended from…

Jacob ben Reuben Aben Ṣur, known by the Hebrew acronym Yaʿbeṣ (1673–1752), was a distinguished rabbi and jurist ( dayyan) descended from the noted Aben Ṣur (Ibn Ṣūr, Ben Ṣur) family of Spanish exiles (Heb. megorashim) in Meknes. Around the beginning of the eighteenth century he moved to Fez and served as its spiritual leader until the day of his death, save for one decade in which he was exiled to the city of his birth as a result of a row with the nagidSaʿadya Lahboz. Due to wars and famine in Fez, Aben Ṣur sojourned in Tetouan in the mid-1730s; it was only during the last dec…

Abiathar ben Elijah ha-Kohen, who was born around 1041, probably in Jerusalem, was the last important gaon of the Palestinian yeshiva. He was the eldest of the four sons of Elijah ha-Kohen Gaon, and in keeping with standard practice, his father put him on an advancement track in the yeshiva. By 1067 he was already signing documents as “fourth in line,” thus making him a member of the ḥavurat ha-qodesh (sacred collegium; i.e., the yeshiva); by 1071 he was co-signing responsa with his father and, apparently as his right hand, went on missions to Egypt on his behalf.In addition to Geniza docum…

Best known as the guide of Charles de Foucault during his exploration of southern Morocco between 1883 and 1884, Mordechai Abisrur was born around 1830 to one of the oldest Jewish families in Akka (Ar. Aqqā), where he learned how to read and write in the primary religious school (Jud.-Ar. ṣ lā) of the Jewish Quarter (Ar. mallāḥ). A gifted and talented child, Abisrur earned the admiration of the community's elders, who sent him to study in Marrakesh in the hope that he would become a rabbi and return to the village to teach the young, preach in the loc…

Maklouf Abitan was born in 1908 in Casablanca. His parents had moved to this growing coastal city from the Dra’a Valley. As a child he attended traditional Jewish schools, first a ṣlā (the Moroccan version of a ḥeder - see Kuttāb) and then a yeshiva. He was a self-educated individual who taught himself French and was an avid reader of the press and literature in general. He and his wife Suliqa had three sons and five daughters. For a living, he ran a haberdashery.Abitan was active in the Hebrew and Jewish national revival that took place in Casablanca in the 1930s. In his home…

ʿAmor Joseph ben Solomon Abiṭbol (1780–1853) was a rabbinical judge ( dayyan) and liturgical poet in the Jewish community of Sefrou, Morocco, in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was the son of Solomon Abiṭbol (d. 1818) and a contemporary of Isaac Bengualid Ben Walīd (1797–1870) of Tetouan and Joseph ben Judah Berdugo (1802–1854) of Meknes. He earned high praise from Rabbi Abner Israel ben Vidal (IV) Ṣarfati of Fez (known as Ish, 1827–1884), and also from the kabbalist Jacob Abuḥaṣera (Sīdnā al-Ḥakham, 1808–1880) of the Tafilalet. Like many other rabbis of the time, Abi…

Saul Jeshua ben Isaac Abiṭbol (1739–1809), known as Rav Shisha, was a rabbi, rabbinical judge ( dayyan), and leader of the Jewish community of Sefrou, Morocco, in the second half of the eighteenth century. One of the greatest scholars in the history of Sefrou and the first member of his family to serve as a religious leader in that city, Abiṭbol was resolute and forceful, time and again rebuking the notables of the community as “insubordinate and bothersome.” He was also tough with his colleagues; he would decry pious scholars, even attacking Rabbi Petahiah Mordechai ben Jekuthiel Berd…

Isaac Mandil ben Abraham Abi Zimra (ca. 1540–1610), who lived and worked in Morocco and Algeria during the second half of the sixteenth century, was a rabbi in Fez and a scion of a family exiled from Spain. Mandil’s poetry is praised in various old and new sources and research projects. M. Zulay spoke of Mandil with great admiration and described him as “a poet the son of a poet.” It was Zulay who determined that Mandil lived between the years 1540 and 1610. H. Schirmann lectured on Mandil at the Eighth International Congress of Judaic Studies, but his text was not published an…

Misirli Ibrahim Efendi (1872–1933) was a famous Turkish oud player ( udi) born into the family of a merchant in Aleppo, Syria. His real name was Avram Levi, but he was called Misirli Ibrahim (Egyptian Abraham) because he lived and performed in Cairo for many years and first became famous there.Gradually building his career in Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, Ibrahim finally went to Istanbul. Upon establishing himself there, he studied classical Turkish music, the music of the Ottoman court and urban elite, with Haci Kirami Effendi, Hoca Ziya Bey, and the famous…

The Aboulker family of Algiers originated in Spain. The name appears for the first time in the twelfth century as Ibn Pulguer in Toledo. In Arabic, Abū  ʾl-Khayr is a kunya (nickname) meaning a good or fortunate man. In Portuguese, it could have morphed into Abulquerque. In French, it became Aboulker.      Over the centuries the family included numerous scholars, rabbis, merchants, and physicians.  In the first half of the fourteenth century, Isaac ibn Pulguer (also Pollegar, Pulgar, Policar) translated into Hebrew Book Three of the great Muslim theologian al-Ghaz…

Henri Aboulker (1876–1957), a scion of the Aboulker (Abū  ʾl-Khayr) family, was a surgeon and professor in the faculty of medicine, a wounded veteran of World War I, and a political activist devoted to defending the rights of Algerian Jewry. In January 1915 he helped to found the Comité Algérien d'Études Sociales (CAES). The committee, which continued until 1921 , focused on the fight against antisemitism. Among other things, it persuaded the Association Générale des Etudiants d’Alger (l’AGÈA) to accept Jewish students, who until then had been barred from membership.Over the years, …

Born March 5, 1920 in Algiers into the distinguished Aboulker family, José Aboulker was a leader of the French resistance in Algeria during the Second World War. In autumn of 1940, while studying medicine at the University of Algiers, Aboulker began to organize his fellow students. Supported by the “Group of Five,” a circle of patriotic French businessmen and officers in contact with the Allies, Aboulker recruited friends, family, and fellow students, including his cousin Bernard Karsenty and the young Jean Danie…

Colette Béatrice Aboulker-Muscat (1909–2005), a member of Algeria’s famous Aboulker family, was a physician, thinker, and natural healer. Born in Algiers on January 28, 1909, she was the daughter of Henri Samuel Aboulker (1876–1957), a noted neurosurgeon and Jewish communal leader. In 1927, she and her parents visited Jerusalem for the first time and met with Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (1865–1935), who had been a close friend of Samuel Abū ʾl-Khayr (Aboulker), her great-grandfather.In 1954 Colette Aboulker settled permanently in Israel with her second husband, Aryeh Mu…

Abraham bar Ḥiyya (d. ca. 1136) was a philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and translator who worked at the Christian court of Barcelona and perhaps for Alfonso I of Aragon. Very little is known about his life other than an altercation he had with Judah ben Barzillay al-Bargeloni in connection with a wedding that Bar Ḥiyya felt ought to have been postponed for astrological reasons. It is also known that he visited France. He was still active in 1136, when he was last mentioned as a collaborat…

Abraham ben Hillel (d. 1223), known as he-Ḥasid (Heb. the pious), was a scholar, physician, and poet from a distinguished family in Fustat. His grandfather was the Av Beit Din (chief judge) of the Jewish court in Egypt. He is known to us mainly as the author of the satirical polemic  Megillat Zuṭṭa, a composition in verse and rhymed prose (written in 1196) that describes the activities of the anonymous Zuṭṭa (Aram. little man),  most likely Sar Shalom ben Moses ha-Levi, an intriguer and pretender to the office of nagid and a bitter opponent of Moses Maimonides in the power struggle that t…

Abraham ben Isaac of Granada probably lived in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, but there is no conclusive support for this dating, and nothing is known about his life. His name is cited in the introduction to the long commentary on the Sefer Yeṣira by Moses ben Isaac Botarel, a kabbalist with messianic pretensions who lived in Spain and France at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century. Botarel mentions a Hebrew work entitled Sefer ha-Berit (Book of the Covenant) and attributes it to an author named Abraham ben Isaac of Granada. The work has …

Mullāh Abraham ben Mullāh Āghā Bābā Shīrāzī (d. 1910), also known as Mullāh Abram, was one of the last important rabbis in Iran. It is not known exactly when he became a rabbi or moved to Tehran, reportedly with a group of Jews from Shiraz. However, as early as 1870, he was living in the Jewish quarter of Tehran and was addressed as mullāh, a title borrowed from the Shīʿī Muslim milieu that indicates knowledge, particularly of religious matters.In 1875, after the death of Mullāh Bākhāj, whose precise dates are unknown, Mullāh Abram became the chief rabbi of Iran. He also…

Abraham ben Nathan, born around 1037, was the only the son of Nathan ben Abraham, the rival of Gaon Solomon ben Judah in the famous conflict that took place between 1038 and 1042. The dispute ended when Nathan ben Abraham was appointed Av Beit Din of the yeshiva, with hopes of obtaining the position of gaon. He apparently died before achieving this goal.Abraham ben Nathan inherited his father’s ongoing feeling of frustration and bitterness toward the Palestinian yeshiva and its leaders. His maternal grandfather, Mevorakh ben Eli, was one of the leaders of the Babylonian communi…

Don Abraham of Toledo (Abraham el Alfaquin = al-Ḥakīm) was physician to King Alfonso X (el Sabio - the Learned) of Castile, and to his son Sancho IV. He was active between 1260 and 1277 and translated books from Arabic into Castilian under the patronage of the king in Toledo and Burgos. Together with five other prominent Jews of the royal court, he was kidnapped in 1270 by rebellious nobles demanding the elimination of taxes. He was restored to his position in 1275. He died in 1294.Abraham’s translations include La escala de Mahoma (The Ladder of Muḥammad), an account of the Miʿrāj, or heavenly…

The Sephardi family name Abravanel, first mentioned around 1300, became famous among Jews in Spain in the fifteenth century. After the expulsion in 1492, members of the family were scattered in Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. Others were baptized in Portugal at the time of the forced conversion of 1497 but as marranos preserved the name clandestinely and revived it in the seventeenth century in the Sephardi communities of Amsterdam, London, and the New World.One of the largest branches of the Abravanel family settled in Naples, where throughout the fifteenth and early…

Moses ben Raphael Abravanel (d. 1692) was born in Istanbul at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Not much is known about his family background, but various sources suggest that he was a member of the prestigious marrano branch of the Abravanel family and was aware of the marrano experience. His talent in medicine earned him a position at court (see Court Jews). In 1669 he converted to Islam, taking the name Hayatizâde Mustafa Efendi, and became the chief physician of the Ottoman palace. After a long and successful service, as will be explained below, he…

Samuel Abravaya was born in 1880 in Izmir. He graduated in 1903 from the Imperial Medical School of Istanbul and continued his studies in Paris. From 1919 to 1935 he was a docent at the Medical School of Istanbul University. Abravaya specialized in gastroenterology. He was a member of the French Gastroenterological Society, vice president of the Ottoman Medical Society, and physician to President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In 1935 Abravaya was elected to the Turkish National Assembly as an independent deputy from Niğde. He retained his seat until March 8, 1943, but his pr…

1. LifeAbū ʾl-Barakāt Hibat Allāh ibn Malkā al-Baghdādī al-Baladī was a physician and philosopher in twelfth-century Iraq. His contemporaries dubbed him “the Singular One of the Age” (Ar. awḥad al-zamān), and some claimed that as a philosopher he had attained the level of Aristotle himself. Born in Balad, near Mosul, around 1077, Abūʾl-Barakāt was one of the foremost Jewish intellectuals of his time. Under his Hebrew name, Baruch ben Melekh, he wrote Bible and Talmud commentaries in Judeo-Arabic, including commentaries on the Book of Ecclesiastes and on tractate Soṭ…

ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn ibn Faraj was a Karaite grammarian of Hebrew who lived in Jerusalem in the first half of the eleventh century. He was attached to the Karaite college (Ar. dār lil-ʿilm) founded by his teacher,  Joseph Ibn Nūḥ (Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf), and succeeded to its leadership after his death.The largest of Abū ʿl-Faraj Hārūn’s numerous works in Arabic on the Hebrew language of the Bible is a comprehensive study in eight parts on Hebrew morphology and syntax entitled al-Kitāb al-Mushtamil ʿalā al-Uṣūl wa ‘l-Fuṣūl fī ‘l-Lugha al-ʿIbrāniyya (The Comprehensive Book of General Princ…

Abū ʾl-Ḥasan al-Ṣūrī was a Samaritan scholar who was active in in the first half of the eleventh century (cf. Schwarb 2013, pp. 128–132). The kunya Abū ʾl-Ḥasan , with its Aramaic form av hisda (Samaritan pronunciation: ab isda), is an epithet meaning “the handsome one” or “the good one”; the Hebrew form Yefet is not documented before the nineteenth century. It is not clear where Abū ʾl-Ḥasan lived. According to his nisba, he could have originated in the city of Tyre ( Ṣūr) in Lebanon or in the now-deserted village of Ṣūratān near Nablus (cf. Wedel 1989, pp. 6–11). Shehade (19…

The Abuḥaṣera (Abiḥaṣera) family, a major saintly lineage of Moroccan rabbis in the modern era, embodies four facets of hagiographic identity in Jewish North Africa and its diaspora.First, it represents the significance of patrilineal descent in the Moroccan hagiographic tradition (see also Barukh Azugh and Ḥayyim Pinto). The family traces itself back to Samuel Elbaz, sometimes said to have been a sixteenth-century rabbinic emissary (Heb. meshullaḥ or shadar) to Morocco from Jerusalem. According to well-circulated hagiographic narratives, Samuel took on the nam…

Barukh Abuḥaṣera, born in 1941, was the second son of the Moroccan holy man and kabbalist Rabbi Israel Abuḥaṣera (Baba Sali). Eclipsed by his older brother, Meʾir, who was destined to take his father’s mantle, Barukh embarked on a political career in the National Religious Party (Mafdal). In 1973 he was elected deputy mayor of the town of Ashkelon. In this capacity he was accused of corruption and sentenced to a seven-year term in prison. Following the premature death of his brother, he was paroled, just a few months before the death of Baba Sali in 1984.Basking in his father’s glory, Baru…

Israel Abuḥaṣera, also known as Baba Sali (1890–1984), a grandson of Jacob Abuḥaṣera, was born in Tafilalet, a region in southeastern Morocco on the fringes of the Sahara Desert. Emulating his revered grandfather, he studied Kabbala and served as a communal leader and Torah teacher. Unlike Rabbi Jacob, he did not engage in scholarly writing and was not widely known outside Tafilalet. In 1963, after several visits, he settled permanently in Israel, first in Yavneh, then in Ashkelon, and finally in Netivot, with which he became str…

Jacob Abuḥaṣera (1808–1880), known as “the Divine Kabbalist,” was a rabbinical scholar and charismatic mystic from the Tafilalet region in southeastern Morocco. He was regarded as a major spiritual authority by Jews of Moroccan and North African origin, and his memory lives in the folk tradition of Maghrebi Jews as a venerated ṣaddiq (Heb./Jud.-Ar. holy man), the precursor of the distinguished Abuḥaṣera family and the source of its miraculous power. The rich hagiographic literature on his life accorded him a noble ancestor, Rabbi Samuel Elbaz of sixteenth-century Damascus, who…

Abū ‘Imrān Mūsā al-Za‘afrānī al-Tiflīsī founded a Jewish sect in Babylonia and Persia in the early ninth century during the gaonic period. The little that is known about him comes primarily from Karaite sources. According to the followers of Isma‘īl al-‘Ukbarī, their master had been Abū ‘Imrān’s teacher and the inspiration for his doctrines. Jacob al-Qirqisānī confirms that Abū ‘Imrān and al-‘Ukbarī held similar views on fixing the beginning of the month (Heb. rosh ḥodesh), but notes that Abū ‘Imrān did not follow his teacher’s example to the letter. According to the Karaite Japheth ben…

Abū ‘Īsā al-Iṣfahānī, in the mid-eighth century, was the founder of one of the first Jewish sects to arise in Babylonia and Persia. As was the case for many other Jewish sects in the early gaonic period, it disappeared soon after its appearance, and even remnants of its writings have not survived. Thus our information about ‘Abū ‘Īsā and his doctrine comes from sometimes contradictory Karaite and Muslim sources.According to the Muslim heresiographer al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153), Abū ‘Īsā was called Isaac ben Jacob, but others state that his name was Obed Elohim (Heb. wor…

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Muṣannif was a Samaritan scholar who was probably active in the second half of the twelfth century. The name al-Muṣannif means “writer,” and in his case can be either a laqab (cognomen) or simply his profession. The kunya Abū Isḥāq (“father of Isaac”) refers to the given name Ibrāhīm in accordance with the genealogy of the biblical patriarchs. According to a citation by Ibn Kaththār (ca. 1270–1355; Kitāb al-Farāʾiḍ, Ms Sassoon 719), his full name was Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Faraj b. Mārūth (al-ṭabīb). In the ʿUyūn al-Anbāʾ fī Ṭabaqāt al-Aṭibbāʾ (“History of Physician…

Isaac ben Samuel Abū ʾl-Khayr, one of the prominent ancestors of the well-known Aboulker family, was the chief rabbi of the Jewish community of Algiers at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He was named after the first Isaac ben Samuel Abū ʾl-Khayr, a famous sixteenth-century scholar. During his tenure in Algiers there were several waves of emigration to Palestine, including some major Algerian rabbinical figures.The leadership of Algerian Jewry was deeply divided at the end of the eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth. One of the major causes w…

The Jewish philosopher and mutakallim (Ar. theologian, lit. discussant [of religious questions]) Abū ʾl-Khayr Dāʾūd ibn Mūsaj (also known as Abū ʾl-Khayr Dāwūd ibn Mushaj, David ben Mūsaj, Abū ʾl-Khayr al-Yahūdī, Abū ʾl-Khayr ben Yaʿīsh, and possibly Abū ʾl-Ḥusayn David ben Mashiaḥ), lived in Baghdad during the second half of the tenth century and thus was a contemporary of the Arab historian and geographer al-Masʿūdī (d. 957). It is not clear whether he was of Rabbanite or Karaite background. Abū ʾl-Khayr was once wrongly identified with the philosopher of Jewish origin Ibn al-Muqamm…

Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240–after 1291) was the founder of prophetic Kabbala. Born in Saragossa, he moved to Tudela and then in 1260 left Spain for the land of Israel in search of the legendary river Sambation. The war between the Mongols and Mameluks, however, forced him to return to Europe. In the early 1260s he was in Capua, studying Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, after which he returned to Spain. In 1270, in Barcelona, he began studying an unusual version of Kabbala whose most important exponent was Baruch Togarmi and received a revelation th…

The Abulafia family (also Abulafia, Abulefia; from Ar. Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya, father [possessor] of good health) was an influential Sephardic family of rabbis, intellectuals, poets, dayyanim, communal leaders and Court Jews in Spain in the Middle Ages. After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, many of its descendants settled in the Ottoman Empire, where they continued to serve as rabbinic and communal leaders and halakhic decisors (Heb. posqim).The most important branch of the family lived in Toledo from the twelfth century onward, and its members were generally called Levi (…

Ḥayyim ben David Abulafia (Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya) was born around 1700. Known as “the Baḥur” (Heb. Young Man), he was a rabbi and kabbalist. After serving as rabbi in Larisa, he became head of a Jewish court ( bet din) in Salonica in 1761, and while there taught the Sabbatean Abraham Miranda. Abulafia later settled in Izmir (Smyrna) and was appointed one of the community’s two chief rabbis; he died there on February 25, 1775. Abulafia wrote the Nishmat Ḥayyim (Salonica, 1806) on the Sefer Miṣvot Gadol. The book also includes some of his sermons.Leah Bornstein-MakovetskyBibliographyBenayahu, Meir…

Ḥayyim ben Jacob Abulafia (Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya), known as “the Second,” was the grandson of Ḥayyim ben Jacob Abulafia “the First.” He was born in Hebron around 1660 and studied Torah in Jerusalem after his family moved there in 1666. His teachers were the rabbis Moses Galante, Abraham Amigo, and Solomon Algazi. In 1699 he was sent to Salonica as an emissary. He served as a rabbi in Izmir (Smyrna) in 1712 and from 1721 to 1740; from 1718 to 1721 he served as a rabbi in Safed.In 1740, Abulafia was invited by Shaykh Ḍāhir al-ʿUmar, the ruler of the Galilee, to settle there and renew the communi…

Born around the beginning of the nineteenth century, probably in Tiberias, Ḥayyim Nissim ben Isaac Abulafia (Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya) died in Jerusalem on February 21, 1861. He was a descendant of Ḥayyim ben David Abulafia, who moved to Tiberias from Izmir at the invitation of al-Ḍāhir al-ʿUmar at the end of the 1730s. Ḥayyim Nissim followed in his ancestor’s footsteps by becoming the chief rabbi of Tiberias. On January 1, 1837, during his incumbency, the city was devastated by an earthquake. Ḥayyim Nissim, his wife, and his daughter, Sarah, aged three, survived the…

Rabbi Isaac Abulafia (Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya) was born in Damascus in 1825, the son of Moses and Oro Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya and the grandson of Rabbi Ḥayyim Nissim Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya, chief rabbi of Jerusalem from 1854 to 1861. During the Damascus Affair (1840), Moses Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya converted to Islam under torture and testified against the chief rabbi, Jacob ʿAntebi. Afterward he returned to Judaism, but he had lost his prestige in the community. He sent Isaac to his grandfather in Tiberias. Isaac was tutored by his grandfather, and after they moved to Jerusalem, he was r…

Jedidiah Raphael Ḥay Abulafia (Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya), known as Rav Yira (acronym for Yedidya Refaʾel Abū ʾl-ʿĀfiya), was the seventh head of the Bet El Yeshiva, presiding over the institution from 1850 to 1871. He was the primary editor of Shalom Sharabi’s writings and produced the most widely accepted version of Sharʿabi’s prayer intentions (Heb. kavvanot). Like Jacob Shealtiel Nino, he was affiliated with the Bet El community from childhood.Abulafia enlarged the Bet El prayerbook to include devotions for the entire year and edited its introductory sections, commonly called Reḥovot ha-Na…

Joseph ben Ṭodros ha-Levi Abulafia, the brother of Me’ir ben Todros ha-Levi Abulafia, was born in Burgos. Active in the first half of the twelfth century, he spent most of his life in Burgos but apparently settled in Toledo at some time where he remained until his death. Joseph ben Ṭodros was an anti-rationalist thinker, and as such he took an active part, together with other Jews from the Spanish kingdoms and France, such as Solomon ben Abraham of Montpellier, in the dispute pertaining to the works of Maimonides, Moses, which were condemned as rationalist because in them he used r…

Me’ir ben Ṭodros ha-Levi Abulafia, known as Ramah, was born in  in the second half of the twelfth century. The Abulafias, of Andalusian origin, were one of the most distinguished families in the local Jewish community. Me’ir’s father, Ṭodros, was well versed in talmudic scholarship. Me’ir received a very thorough education; besides halakha, he learned Arabic and became familiar with the best poetic and philosophic traditions of al-Andalus. He married the daughter of one of Toledo’s foremost Jewish courtiers (see Court Jews), Joseph ibn Shoshan, the treasurer of Alfonso VIII.…

Abū ʾl-Kathīr Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyāʾ (d. ca. 932) was a Jewish theologian and Bible translator from Tiberias whose main claim to fame is the fact that Saʿadya Gaon studied with him at some point. He is not mentioned in any Jewish source, and apart from the Andalusian heresiographer and polemicist Ibn Ḥazm (d. 1064), who mentions him as a Jewish mutakallim (rational theologian), our main source of information is Kitāb al-Tanbīh (ed. De Goeje, 1894) by the well-known Muslim historian al-Masʿūdī (d. 956). In his brief survey of Arabic translations of the Bible, al-Masʿ…

Abū ʾl-Munajjā Solomon ibn Shaʿya was the official in charge of agriculture under al-Afḍal, the viceroy of Fatimid Egypt. Over a period of six years beginning in 1113, he planned and built a canal in the eastern sector of the Nile Delta that significantly improved the irrigation system. Although al-Afḍal had named the canal after himself, the grateful peasant farmers of the Delta dubbed it the Abū ʾl-Munajjā canal. According to the fourteenth-century chronicler Ibn Duqmāq, it was either for this reason or because of the huge cost of the project that al-Afḍal had al-Mu…

See Ṣanūc, YacqūbNorman A. Stillman

Abun ben Sherara is known only from Moses Ibn Ezra’s Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa ʾl-Mudhākara (fol. 36). According to the information it provides, he was a poet who was active in the second half of the eleventh century, a native or resident of Lucena who later settled in Seville. Why he left Lucena, a flourishing center of Jewish culture that brought together the most renowned poets and teachers of the time, is unknown. It has been suggested that, like other Jewish contemporaries, he moved to Seville because this large urban center offered greater poss…

Lack of information and the existence of several writers of the same name make it difficult to identify Abun of Granada. None of his works has been preserved. He does not seem to be the tenth-century Abun cited by al-Ḥarīzī in the Taḥkemoni (chap. 3) or the Abun ben Sherara, a resident of Granada in the second half of the eleventh century, mentioned in the Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa ʾl-Mudhākara (ed. Halkin, p. 66).Based on the poems that Moses Ibn Ezra dedicated to him in his dīwān, Abun of Granada was probably a judge, connected by birth or residence to the city of Granada, and a me…

, Abraham ben Moses Abū Qārā (Abū Qārā or Boccara, d. 1879) was a noted scholar and leader of the Jewish community of Tunis during the middle and second half of the nineteenth century.The Abū Qārā family belonged to the Portuguese/Livornese community (see Grana) in the city of Tunis. A number of family members served as rabbis and heads of the community almost from its beginning in the early part of the eighteenth century until the first half of the twentieth century. Three members of the family named Abraham served in the rabbinate o…

The Abū Qārā (Boccara) family was one of the Portuguese-Jewish families that emigrated from Italy to Tunisia during the seventeenth century. In Tunis, they belonged to the Grana community, as Jews from Livorno (Leghorn) who settled in Tunisia were known. The family was especially renowned for its rabbis. Samson Abū Qārā (d. 1769) was the first family member to serve as a judge in the Tunis rabbinical court (Heb. bet din). This was before the Twansa (Arabic-speaking indigenous Jews) and the Grana separated into separate synagogues in 1741. Abraham Abū Qārā I (d. 1817) was the first …

see Abū Qārā (Boccara) - FamilyHaim Saadoun

Nothing is known about the life and work of Abū ʾl-Rabīʿ ben Barukh, mentioned by Moses Ibn Ezra in the Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa ʾl-Mudhākara as a poet from Lucena (Cordova). A contemporary of the scholars and men of letters connected to this city by birth or training from the middle of the eleventh century, he must have been one of the group of authors who made this enclave a prestigious center of Jewish cultural and religious life. His name is mentioned along with two other poets, Isaac ibn Lev and Abraham ibn Ḥayyāt, both from Granada and without known writings.Abū ʾl-Rabīʿ ben Barukh belonged…

Abū Saʿīd was a Samaritan scholar who lived in Egypt in the second half of the thirteenth century, as can be inferred from his usage of Arabic and a fatwā (responsum) he issued in 1262. He is best known for his revision of the Arabic translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch. In the oldest manuscript (MS Sassoon 977 from 727/1326–27), he is called Abū Saʿīd b. Abī al-Ḥusayn b. Abī Saʿīd, but most Samaritan scholars refer to him simply as Abū Saʿīd. For biographical and bibliographical discussion, see Shehade 1977, pp. 119–148.  Works(1) Revision of the Samaritan translation of the Torah…

Yiḥye ben Shalom Abyaḍ (1864–1935) was a reformist rabbi, scholar, and traditional physician in Sanʿa, Yemen. He was closely associated with the work of his teacher Yiḥye Qāfiḥ. Together with Qāfiḥ, he provided new leadership for the community and worked to improve its spiritual and social conditions. He was especially active, in the spirit of his mentor, in developing programs and activities designed to counteract what they saw as the negative impact of the Kabbala on their Yemenite brethren. They both met with opposition from …

Like the study of Ottoman Jewry, the academic study of Iranian (Persian) Jewry is a subfield of the study of the Jews in the Islamic and Mizraḥi (“eastern”) worlds. It originated in the study of Iranian linguistics in the late nineteenth century and began to grow in the late 1960s with the spread of the study of Judeo-Persian texts. It expanded considerably for the next three decades, but remains a neglected field of Jewish and Iranian studies, with hardly any younger scholars entering the field.Philology and LinguisticsThe study of the Judeo-Persian language began as a number of…

Prior to the second half of the twentieth century, much of the research devoted to the Jews of the Islamic world followed in the paths established by the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars of the nineteenth century and dealt with the history, literature, and thought of the medieval period. Judeo-Arabic civilization was one of the major foci of Wissenschaft scholarship, as too were aspects of Hispanic Jewish history and culture—but only for the classical Islamic Middle Ages (ca. 850–1250) in the…

The academic study of Jews living in the Ottoman Empire is a subfield of the academic study of Islamicate Jewry. Compared to the general study of Jews under Islam, a field that has grown tremendously since the 1970s, our understanding of Ottoman Jewry is still in its nascent stage. The pre-Ottoman Geniza period is relatively well studied, and in recent years there has been a growing number of works on Ottoman Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet the middle Ottoman period, fr…

The Acimans (Adjimans) were a family of Sephardi bankers and diplomats who attained great importance in the Ottoman Empire, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The family settled in Turkey after the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and was part of the Sephardi elite, also including the Camondo and Gabbai families, that rose to prominence in the Ottoman world. Acimans served at the Ottoman court as financial consultants to the sultan and as merchants or bankers for the Janissaries ( Ocak Bâzergânı or Ocak Sarrâfı). Working with the royal elite had its risks. In…

André Albert Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on January 2, 1951. He left Egypt for Italy in 1965 and settled in New York with his family in 1969. A professor of literature, Proust scholar, and writer, Aciman achieved relative notoriety with his first book, Out of Egypt: A Memoir (New York, 1994), which won the Whiting Foundation Award. The memoir is an aesthetic transposition of what it was like growing up Jewish in Alexandria during the 1950s and 1960s. It is a tour de force combining factual description and personal vision. The Alexandria Aciman evokes is as elusive as t…

Avram Aciman (fl. second half of the nineteenth century) was born in Istanbul into the distinguished Aciman (Adjiman) family of Ottoman Sephardim. He was one of the four Jewish members of the first Ottoman Parliament, convened from 1877 to 1878. Representing Istanbul, he was the only Jewish deputy who actively participated in the proceedings of the first session. He supported the general opposition in the chamber against the high-handed bureaucratic order and proposed a legislative amendment requiring provincial officials…

Eli Acıman was born in 1919 in Istanbul. He studied journalism in Paris and upon his return to Istanbul began his career in advertising. In 1944, he founded Faal Reklam Acentası (Faal Advertising Agency) together with the entrepreneurs Vitali Hakko and Mario Beghian, but the latter two withdrew from the firm soon afterward. In 1946, Acıman obtained the agency’s first major client, the Turkish industrial giant, Koç Enterprises. By 1957, the agency had grown considerably, and together with Afif Erdemir and Nesim Matan he incorporated it under the name Faal Ajans. Soon after…

Isaiah (Yeşaya) Aciman (d. 1826 in Istanbul) was a scion of the well-known Aciman (Adjiman) family. Like his father and uncles, he pursued a career in finance, and from 1808 he served as a banker to Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839), and at the same time as a money-changer for the Janissaries. Two of his contemporaries were Solomon Camondo and Ezekiel Gabbai, very influential Jewish bankers in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. A powerful and wealthy man, Isaiah was a generous benefactor of Jewish communities in Istanbul and elsewhere in the empire.…

Isaac ben Samuel Adarbi was a  Sephardi rabbi and halakhic authority in Salonica. Born there between 1515 and 1520, he served for a time as rabbi of the Lisbon congregation in Salonica, with which his family was affiliated, while from around 1552 till his death (ca. 1584), he was rabbi of the Shalom congregation. The date of death on his tombstone (5337/1577) seems to be in error, as Adarbi signed a communal regulation in the year 5384/1584.Like Samuel de Medina, Adarbi was a disciple of  Joseph Taitatzak, but the two students disagreed with each other on some halakhic matters. …

Salamon Adato was born in 1894 in Edirne. He received his primary education at the Alliance Israélite Universelle school there, and in 1908 entered the prestigious Galatasaray Lisesi (Lycée de Galatasaray) in Istanbul, from which he graduated in 1912. Immediately afterwards he entered the law school of Istanbul University. When World War I broke out, he interrupted his studies and joined the army. After his discharge he resumed his studies, graduating in 1919, and that same year entered the law …

The Addas, one of the first Jewish families in Egypt to engage in trade with Europe in the modern period, made significant contributions to Egypt’s economic development and held important governmental posts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first noteworthy member of the family was Sabbato Adda, whom Napoleon Bonaparte named grand prêtre de la nation juive in 1798, responsible for relations between the Egyptian Jewish community and the French army of occupation. Other members of the family played integral roles in the Jewish community an…

Georges Adda was born in Tunis on September 22, 1916 into a Jewish family that was religious and conservative; his character was marked with gravitas and seriousness. He worked as an office clerk and  joined the Communist Party in 1934. After the leaders of the Destour and Communist parties were arrested in September 1934, Adda was one of the rank-and-file members who continued the clandestine political struggle. He was arrested in September 1935, but after his release in April 1936, he attended the Conférence Consultative of the …

Lancelot Addison, an Anglican minister and scholar of Judaism and Islam, was born in Maulds Meaburn, England, in 1632, and died in Lichfield, England, in 1703. Between 1663 and 1670, Addison was the chaplain of the British colony of Tangier, in present-day Morocco. He was acquainted with many of the Sephardic Jews living in Tangier at the time and attempted to convert them to Christianity. Through conversations with Jews and Muslims, observation of Jewish practices in Tangier, and wide reading in late Renaissance scholarship, Addison compiled materials …

The peninsula of Aden is situated on the south­ern coast of Arabia, at the entrance to the Red Sea. The British crown colony (1839–196­7) occupied only some seventy‑five square miles. Aden’s climate is exceedingly harsh, marked by stifling heat. Its land is barren, devoid of agriculture and mineral wealth. The British recognized the strate­gic significance of Aden’s harbor, commanding the mouth of the Red Sea and the route to India. Aden became a center for fueling ships. With the opening of the Su…