Cattan

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CATTAN

CATTAN , North African family. joseph b. samuel cattan left *Fez as a result of the upheavals of the 1640s and settled in Leghorn, Italy, where he published the Sefer ha-Yashar and Ketonet Yosef. He was appointed dayyan in Leghorn and then in Venice. abraham cattan (c. 1669) was rabbi in *Tetuán, Morocco. jacob cattan, physician and kabbalist in Fez, wrote between 1695 and 1715 a work on the effects of plants and fruits on the human body and a second allegorical work on the subject of dreams, both unpublished. In *Tunis, abraham cattan was appointed dayyan in about 1780. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the family produced many prominent figures in Tunisian and French Jewry.

bibliography:

J.M. Toledano, Ner ha-Ma'arav (1911), 138–45; J. Ben-Naim, Malkhei Rabbanan (1931), 14; J. Lambert, Choses et Gens de la Tunisie (1912) 97f.

[David Corcos]