Saadia ben Levi Azankot (Hebrew: סְעַדְיָה בֵּן לֵוִי אֲזַנְקוֹט; fl. 1629–1650) was a 17th-century Jewish Moroccan Orientalist.

Biography

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Azankot lived in Holland in the first half of the seventeenth century, where he was teacher of Jewish literature to Johann Heinrich Hottinger.[1][2]

He published a versified paraphrase of the Book of Esther in Amsterdam in 1647, rhymed in the form of an acrostic, under the title Iggeret ha-Purim (אִגֶּרֶת הַפּוּרִים‎).[3] The Bodleian Library holds two manuscripts bearing his name: one containing a transcription of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed in Arabic characters, which Azankot made for Jacobus Golius between 1644 and 1645 and contains at the end a poem with Azankot's acrostic;[4] the other manuscript containing Hebrew translation of the Lamiat al-Ayam of Husain bin Ali, appended to a printed copy of the same.[5]

References

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  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainGottheil, Richard; Hirschfeld, Hartwig (1901–1906). "Azanḳoṭ, Saadia b. Levi". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 361.

  1. ^ Poole, William (2018). "Early Oxford Hebraism and the King James Translators (1586–1617): The View from New College". In Feingold, Mordechai (ed.). Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord. Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions. Vol. 22. Leiden: Brill. pp. 59–81. doi:10.1163/9789004359055_004. ISBN 978-90-04-35905-5.
  2. ^ Gilad, Elon (12 January 2014). "איך זה שלרמטכ"ל הראשון ממוצא מרוקאי יש שם אשכנזי?". Haaretz (in Hebrew).
  3. ^ Fuks, Lajb; Fuks-Mansfeld, Renate G. (1984). Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands, 1585–1815: Historical Evaluation, and Descriptive Bibliography. Brill. p. 132. ISBN 90-04-07056-7.
  4. ^ Neubauer, Adolf (1886). Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford. No. 1240. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 438.
  5. ^ Neubauer, Adolf (1886). Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford. No. 1438. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 511.