David Attias

Merchant and writer David Attias championed the use of Ladino, the vernacular language common among Jews of the Ottoman Empire. Born in Sarajevo, he moved to Livorno (Leghorn) in 1769. As part of the vibrant Sephardic community in the Ottoman Empire, he decried the lack of historical, scientific, and popular literature written in Ladino. Blaming conservatism and traditionalism for this lack, Attias’s La güerta de oro (The Golden Garden), an education anthology covering a variety of practical topics, sought to fill this void and was likely the first secular work written in Ladino. His views on modernization, education, and language reform would inspire later Haskalah thinkers.