- Abraham Azulai
Abraham Azulai (c. 1570 - 1643) (
Hebrew : אברהם בן מרדכי אזולאי) was aKabbalistic author and commentator born at Fez.Biography
The expulsion of the
Moors fromSpain brought a great number of the exiles toMorocco , and these newcomers caused a civil war from which the country in general and theJews in particular suffered greatly. Abraham Azulai, in consequence of this condition of affairs, left his home for theLand of Israel and settled inHebron .Works
In Hebron he wrote a commentary on the
Zohar under the title "Kirjath Arba" (City of Arba; Gen. xxiii.2). The plague of 1619 drove him from his new home, and while inGaza , where he found refuge, he wrote his cabalistic work "Chesed le-Abraham" (Mercy to Abraham; Micah vii.20). It was published after the author's death by Meshullam Zalman ben Abraham Berak of Gorice, in Amsterdam, 1685. Another edition, published inSulzbach in the same year, seems to be a reprint, although Steinschneider, in "Cat. Bodl." col. 666, thinks the reverse. Azulai's commentary on the Zohar, "Zohore Chammah" (Rays of the Sun), was printed in Venice, 1654. He also wrote: "Or ha-Lebanah" (Light of the Moon), "Ma'asse Chosheb" (Cunning Work), and "Kenaf Renanim" (Peacock's Wing). He died inHebron onNovember 6 ,1643 .Of the numerous manuscripts that he left and that were in the hands of his descendant,
Hayyim Joseph David (No. 4), some are still extant in various libraries. Only one was published, a cabalistic commentary on theBible , under the title "Ba'ale Berit Abraham" (Abraham's Confederates; see Gen. xiv.13), Vilna, 1873. His most popular work, "Chesed le-Abraham," referred to above, is akabbalistic treatise with an introduction, אבן השתיה ("The Cornerstone"; see TalmudYoma 53b), and is divided into seven "fountains" (seeZecharia iii.9), each fountain being subdivided into a number of "streams." The contents of the work are hardly different from the average vagaries found in cabalistic books, as evidenced by the following specimen from the fifth fountain, twenty-fourth stream, p. 57d, of the Amsterdam edition:Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography
*
Azulai , "Shem ha-Gedolim," s.v.;
*Isaac Benjacob , "Oẓar ha-Sefarim," p. 196;
*Julius Fürst , "Bibliotheca Judaica," i.67;
*Heimann Joseph Michael , "Or ha-Ḥayyim," p. 12.References
*JewishEncyclopedia
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.