FARISSOL, ABRAHAM.

Sheldon Theatre

Oxford:

1691 and 1690

Igereth Orchoth Olam / Itinera Mundi. Translated and annotated by Thomas Hyde. FIRST LATIN EDITION. Hebrew original and Latin translation face `a face. pp. (16), 196. [Vinograd, Oxford 4; Wing F-438]. * BOUND WITH: Tractatus Alberti Bobovii [Muslim Liturgy and Religious Practices]. Annotated by the Editor Thomas Hyde. Text in Latin and Osmanli (Turkish in Arabic characters). pp. (4), 31, (1 blank).

The Igereth Orchoth Olam is a pioneering work on geography. First published in Ferrara in 1524, it is the first Hebrew book to contain a description of America (chap. 29). Besides its rudimentary description of the “Eretz Chadasha” (The New World), the book also contains a valuable reference to the enigmatic David Reubeni (chap. 14). Regarding the French-born Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (c. 1451-c. 1525) who spent most of his life in Ferrara and Mantua, see D. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (1981) and André Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (1986), pp. 122-135. According to the preface to the second work, Albert Bobowski was a Polish interloper in the Ottoman Empire who, in recognition of his linguistic ability, was given the title “Turjeman Bashi” (chief interpreter) by Sultan Mohammed IV. Bobowski recorded Muslim practices, including the hajj to Mecca and the Muslim rites of circumcision.