Ibn Verga, Joseph
IBN VERGA, JOSEPH
IBN VERGA, JOSEPH (d.c. 1559), Turkish scholar. After escaping to Lisbon with his father, Solomon *Ibn Verga during the expulsion of the Jews from *Spain, Ibn Verga emigrated to Turkey. Settling first in Constantinople, he later moved to Adrianople, where he was rabbi and dayyan. In about 1550 he published here his father's Shevet Yehudah, together with supplementary material. Ibn Verga translated some of the supplementary material from Latin but some of it he heard from Moses *Hamon and from Abraham ibn Arama (otherwise unknown). In addition, he described the persecution of the Jews in Christian countries, and reproduced Isaac *Abrabanel's account of the expulsion of the Jews from Castile, at the beginning of his commentary on the book of Kings. He also incorporated accounts of blood libels in Cairo and *Amasia (Turkey), and a valuable 13th-century chronicle which he found in the library of Yom Tov Sanzolo. Joseph also wrote She'erit Yosef (Adrianople, 1554) on talmudic principles.
bibliography:
Rosanes, Togarmah, 2 (1938), 71–73; M.D. Gaon, Yehudei ha-Mizraḥ be-Ereẓ Yisrael, 2 (1937), 226; S. ibn Verga, Shevet Yehudah, ed. by A. Shochat (1947), index.
[Simon Marcus]