Edelman, Hirsch. Nir LeDavid U’LeZaro [Geneology of Shaul Wahl, ‘King of Poland for a Day’].

(WAHL, SAUL).

n.p.

London

1854

Vinograd, London 542.

Commissioned by Denis M. Samuel, Esquire, a descendant of Wahl. The present work was issued as an appendix to Edelmann’s ‘Gedulath Shaul’ biography of Wahl, with its own title page. Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen (1541-1617) was a wealthy Polish Jew. The legend of his having occupied the Polish throne relates to the friendship between the nobleman Nicholas Radziwill, and Wahl’s father, Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, built by Samuel’s assistance to Radziwill during a time of need. Years later, when the Polish elite could not decide on a king to succeed the deceased Stephen Bathory, Radziwill remarkably suggested that Samuel’s son, Saul, take the throne until the matter was settled, as Polish law forbade the throne to go unoccupied. The Russian scholar Hirsch Edelmann (1805-58) was one of the first competent scholars to examine the manuscripts and rare printed books of the Oppenheim collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and provide the outside world some knowledge of their contents.