Hagadah shel Pesach. With commentary by Isaac Abrabanel

(HAGADAH)

Asher Anshel & Partners

Amsterdam

1695

Additional engraved title depicting large figures of Moses and Aaron beneath six circular vignettes of Biblical themes. Numerous engraved copper-plate illustrations within the text. Complete with FINE FOLDING ENGRAVED HEBREW MAP OF THE HOLY LAND indicating the travels in the Wilderness and the division of the Land among the Tribes of Israel. All accomplished by the proselyte Abraham ben Jacob

Yudlov 93; Yaari 59; Yerushalmi 59-62

The First Illustrated Amsterdam Hagadah. An Attractive Copy with Good margins, in an Original Binding. This is the first Hagadah (and one of the first Hebrew books) with copper engravings. It also contains a folded map of the Land of Israel that was one of the earliest to contain Hebrew type. The present copy also contains an extremely rare variant title page not known to Yaari. In most copies, the top half of the title page contains six vignettes of Biblical scenes; the top half of this variant title contains an illustration of Moses and the Burning Bush. “The illustrations most widely copied in illuminated manuscripts . . . and in hundreds of printed editions are those which first appeared in [the 1695, Amsterdam edition]” (See A.J. Karp, From the Ends of the Earth, pp. 78-90, 99-100). It is thus appropriate that this is the first edition of any Hagadah that identifies who the illustrator was - Abraham b. Jacob, a Christian pastor who converted to Judaism. See B. Roth, Printed Illustrated Haggadoth in Areshet III (1961), pp. 22-25