Ibn Sahula, Isaac

The Jewish Aesop’s Fables. A collection of allegories, fables and puns with moral inferences all written in rhymed prose. The remarkable illustrations are of specifically Jewish origin. “The illustrated Hebrew book par excellence.” A.J. Karp. From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress (1991) p. 125. The second work, Ben ha-Melech ve-ha-Nazir went through several literary reincarnations before it evolved into ibn Chasdai’s Hebrew version. The tale itself is Buddhist in origin, stemming from the Indian sub-continent. Assuming a Pahlavi form it travelled to Persia. Its next incarnation was an Arabic version, of which ibn Chasdai availed himself and created the Hebrew version. See I. Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, Vol. I, p.189. Regarding Reuben ben Abraham Halevi of Offenbach, the translator of the present Yiddish edition, see A. Schischa, The Prince and the Nazir and its Yiddish Translator - a Translation and its Fate, in: Alei Sefer, Vol. XII (1986) pp. 111-23