Saʿadya ben Levi Azankoṭ was a scribe, poet and translator from Hebrew to Arabic and from Arabic to Hebrew. A native of Marrakesh, Azankoṭ did the bulk of his work in the Netherlands during the first half of the seventeenth century. There is no evidence to support the claim that he was a resident of Jerusalem.

Azankoṭ’s only published literary work was Iggeret ha-Purim (Purim Epistle), a version of the Book of Esther in liturgical Hebrew richly interwoven with biblical phrases. It was printed in Amsterdam in 1647 at the press of Joseph ben Israel, the son of Manasseh ben Israel (1604–1657). The I…