Ibn Sahula, Isaac

Meshal ha-Kadmoni [moral parables]. Judeo-German in wayber-taytsch letters. Numerous woodcut engravings. ff.72. (f.65 bound at end). Upper corner of f.31 missing, with loss of a few words. [Friedberg M-3893]. Frankfurt on der Oder: Jonah Gamburg, 1764. * With: Ibn Chasdai, Abraham. Ben ha-Melech ve-ha-Nazir “The Prince and the Hermit”: allegorical tale. Hebrew above and Judeo-German below. ff. 2, 99 (of 101) lacking f. 97 and final 2 leaves. [Vinograd, Furth 563; Friedberg B-1078]. Owner’s inscriptions on front fly leaf and second title. Fuerth: Itzik ben Leib, 1783

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