Tractatus Rabby Samuelis, errorem Iudeorum indicans.

12mo (97 x 145 mm). 29 (instead of 32) ff. Modern black calf. Rare post-incunabular Venetian edition of this eleventh-century anti-Jewish polemical text circulating under the name of Samuel of Morocco. Supposedly written originally in Arabic by the convert Samuel Abu Nasr ibn Abbas, son of Judah ibn Abbas of Fez, it was translated into Latin in the 14th century by the Spanish Dominican Alfonso Buonhombre. In its Arabic form, the work assumedly "claimed to prove the prophetic character of Jesus and Mohamed and argued that too many laws were added to the Torah by the Mishnah and Gemara. Buenhombre adapted the tract to present it as a Christian rather than Muslim polemic" (Jewish Encyclopedia). More recent scholarship (Marsmann, Epistel des Rabbi Samuel an Rabbi Isaak, 1971) indicates that Samuel is possibly fictitious and Alfonso was probably the actual author of the text. - The text occupied a durable place within late medieval and early modern Christian anti-Jewish controversy, repeatedly reissued in different centres and languages. This Venetian edition reflects the continued circulation of such polemical material in Italy at the opening of the sixteenth century. OCLC records only five copies (British Library, Oxford, Cornell, UCLA, Hebrew Union College); Edit 16 lists 14 holding libraries in Italy. - Lacking B1 and B8 as well as the final blank leaf. Light trace of worming to lower edge of fols. B7-C7. - Ink ownership of a mid-16th-century Croatian monk to title-page: "Est ad usum F[rat]ris Cornelii de Sibenico", with earlier note "vide hunc tractatum in hoc volumina adnexum a spinula italice versum". Erased, apparently early ink notes to top of title-page (trimmed, illegible) as well as bottom ("mimag", upside down). Latterly in the collection of the Dutch Arabist Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld (1943-2021) and acquired in the Dutch trade. - Edit 16, CNCE 28188. Nuovo, Alessandro Paganino, p. 149, no. 11. OCLC 173028134. Not in Adams or BM-STC Italian. …