RAHABI, DAVID. Ohel David [on the Calendar, with astronomical and chronological tables]

(INDIAN JUDAICA)

Joseph Proops for the Brothers Boaz

Amsterdam

1791

FIRST EDITION. ONE OF ONLY 50 COPIES. Printer’s device on title. Folding plate at end. Marginalia (possibly by one of the Patron’s?) in French and Hebrew in a contemporary hand

Vinograd, Amsterdam 2185

This copy with presentation inscription (in French and Hebrew) by the publication’s Patrons to Ezekiel Landau (the Noda B’Yehuda) of Prague on opening and closing paste-down end-papers. The Author was a leader of the Jewish community in Cochin, India and son of the great Ezekiel Rahabi, influential merchant throughout the Malabar Coast and chief representative of the Dutch East India Company. Throughout the years of Dutch rule in Malabar (1663-1795) the Rahabi Family undertook to supply the Cochini Jews with all their literary needs via the Proops Family of printers in Amsterdam. Friedberg (Beth Eked, Aleph 873) notes only 50 copies were printed of this study on the origin of the Hebrew calendar and its comparison with the Hindu and Muslim calendar systems. The only Hebrew literary work penned by a Jew of Cochin