Rabbi Abba Mari Chalfan, the astronomer

ḤALFON, ABBA MARI:

By: Kaufmann Kohler, Isaac Broydé Italian astronomer of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 1492 he was at Naples, where he studied astronomy. Ḥalfon was the author of "Ṭa'ame Miẓwot," containing explanatory notes on the Alfonsine Tables, and still extant in manuscript (MS. Naples, iii. F 12; MS. Parma, De Rossi, No. 336, 7, under the title "Ṭa-'ame ha-Kelalim"). According to A. Berliner, the "Bayit Ne'eman," a Hebrew translation or paraphrase of a commentary by Ibn Rajal on the same astronomical tables, with an introductory Hebrew poem, found in the Naples codex, was the work of Abba Mari, who signed thereto the same initials (= "Abba Mari Talmid") as those used by him in his "Ṭa'ame Miẓwot." An elegy written by Ḥalfon(1490) at Lucca on the death of Jehiel of Pisa was published by D. Kaufmann ("R. E. J." xxvi. 106).

Bibliography: Berliner's Magazin, xvi. 49; Steinschneider, Hebr. Bibl. xxi. 116; idem, Hebr. Uebers. p. 626; Mortara, Indice.

Not related to Delmedigo family. See Wachstein, Randbemerkungen in Nachträge, page 21-22.

Not a direct exile from France to Italy. See Wachstein, page 532.

Jacobi, Vol. I, p. 174-5