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. (1 blank(, (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.