Solomon Malka was born in Asfelou, in the Tafilalet region of Morocco, on August 14, 1878, and studied in his youth at a yeshiva in his hometown. In 1896, he married Hannah Assouline (1882–1952) from Tinghir, and two years later the couple immigrated to Palestine. Malka studied in Tiberias and Safed, was ordained as a rabbi, and served as a dayyan (rabbinical judge) in Tiberias. At the suggestion of Elijah Bekhor Ḥazzan, the chief rabbi of Alexandria, he set out in 1906 for Omdurman in what was then the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In 1908, he brought his wife and two daught…