Daniel Hàgege

Born in Tunis into a traditional family, Daniel Hàgege (Ḥajjāj) excelled in his studies. Throughout the early twentieth century he worked for various Judeo-Arabic journals, including as editor in chief of the short-lived Judeo-Arabic weekly Ḥayāt al-janna (1910), and as founder of the magazine al-Nuzha al-tunisiyya (1913–1915, 1933). Hàgege wrote more than thirty books and published a number of piyyutim (Hebrew liturgical poems), but he regularly lamented that his readers did not fully appreciate the costs and hard work that went into publishing, preferring to give and borrow books on loan rather than purchase them. It was presumably to help make ends meet that—along with fellow Tunisian journalist Eliezer Farḥi—Hàgege also worked for many years as a pharmacist. He is most famous for his study of modern Tunisian Judeo-Arabic literature and writers, Intishar al-ktayib al-yahudiyya al-barbariyya al-tunisiyya (Circulation of Tunisian Judeo-Arabic Books, 1939). In 1959, he left Tunisia for Paris, where he spent the rest of his days. He was buried in Jerusalem.