Six-Language Dictionary

Solomon Pinḥasoff

1908

Image

Printed page of Hebrew text with decorative border. — Title page of the second edition of a six-language (Hebrew-Aramaic, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish) dictionary published in Jerusalem in 1908.

Credits

Solomon Pinḥasoff, Sefer milim shishah (Jerusalem: Raphael Ḥayim ha-Kohen, 1908).

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

My Life

[ . . . ] In the country as well as in the town, I lived in a petty-bourgeois environment where the principal effort was directed toward acquisition. In this respect, I cut myself off both from the…

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Printed page with Spanish title in center, below image of three goddesses holding lyre, book, and palette.

Vida nuestra (cover)

Cover of the first issue of La vida nuestra (Our Life), a monthly Jewish culture journal published in Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 1917 and 1923. The typography used for the periodical’s title…

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Copper relief sculpture depicting three hooded men. The one on the left holds a scroll and has a long beard, the middle holds a hammer, and the right holds a hand plow and has a short beard.

The Scholar, the Laborer, and the Toiler of the Soil

Maurice Ascalon, sometimes called the father of modern Israeli decorative arts, was commissioned to create this sculpture for the façade of the Palestine Pavilion of the 1939 New York World’s Fair…

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Creator Bio

The polyglot Solomon Babajan Pinḥasoff (Shlomo ben Pinḥas Babajan) was born in Kabul to a family of merchants originally from Mashhad (today in Iran) and had a traditional education. In 1858, his family moved to Samarkand (today in Uzbekistan), where his Jewish studies included Bukhari (Judeo-Tajik) translations of Scripture and rabbinic commentaries. The Pinḥasoffs were active members of the Samarkand Jewish community, serving as members of the rabbinical court and as emissaries to Jerusalem. A founding member of the Jerusalem Bukhari Quarter, he permanently settled in the city with his family in 1907. In addition to his Six-Language Dictionary (Hebrew-Aramaic, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish), Pinḥasoff also wrote and translated a number of other books. He is buried on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives.