A Jewish Library in Early Modern North Africa

As books moved from their places of production into Maghrebi Jewish libraries, they became symbols of intellectual authority and entry points into a global conversation. They were markers of learning and a way for Maghrebi Jews to take part in a wider Jewish and intellectual world.

At our first meeting of 2026, Noam Sienna will speak about Jewish libraries in North Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He will focus on one library that can be reconstructed in some detail: that of the Eighteenth Century rabbi Yaʿaqov Ibn Tsur (Abensur).

The talk draws on his recent book, Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds (https://iupress.org/9780253.../jewish.... Sienna shows how books sat at the meeting point of private study and communal life. By looking at who bought, sold, borrowed, copied, and read these books, he reveals a world of Maghrebi Jewish learning that was outward-looking, well connected, and culturally distinctive.

Noam Sienna is a scholar of Jewish culture in the Islamic world, specialising in book history and material culture. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Toronto, where he studies Jewish books in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean as part of the interdisciplinary project Hidden Stories: New Approaches to the Local and Global History of the Book. https://hiddenstories.library.utoront...

Join our free mailing list to hear about future talks on Sephardic Jewish genealogy. https://www.sephardic.world/sephardic...

Please support the work of the Sephardic Genealogical Society in producing Sephardic World talks. A small monthly donation makes a huge difference.   / sephardi  

The Sephardic Genealogical Society has a number of fascinating projects that need sponsorship. https://www.sephardic.world/