9/20/2019 Abraham Cohen de Herrera - Wikipedia

Abraham Cohen de Herrera

Abraham Cohen de Herrera (Hebrew: ‫הירירה‬-‫)רבי אברהם כהן בן דוד דה‬, also known as Alonso Nunez de Herrera or Abraham Irira (c. 157 0 – c. 1635), was a religious philosopher and cabbalist. He is supposed by the historian Heinrich
Graetz to hav e been born in 157 0. He is widely supposed to hav e been descended from a Marrano family : place of birth is unknown but may (according to Barbosa Machado the biographer) hav e been Lisbon, Portugal. Other sources link him to
Italy , specifically Tuscany , and as the son of the last Chief Rabbi of Córdoba in Spain.

He is known to hav e married a Sara de Herrera in Amsterdam in 1600; howev er, it is unlikely that this is the wife's original surname. It is also reasonably certain that he had an uncle, Juan de Marchena, who worked as a factor for the Sultan of
Morocco Moulay , Ahmad al-Mansur.

While in Cadiz on the Sultan's business, Herrera is supposed to hav e been captured by the English, was released again after an exchange of diplomatic correspondence between the Sultan and Queen Elizabeth I, and trav elled thereafter to
Amsterdam, where he returned to Judaism. His date of death is between 1635 and 1639: Wiener believ es it was 1635. According to Rodriguez de Castro he may hav e died in Vienna. He wrote sev eral works, originally in Spanish but later (in
accordance with his will) translated to Hebrew.

Works
Epistle on Shiur Qomah, an attempted reconciliation between kabbalah and philosophy. However, as Alexander Altmann, writes "Herrera was too much of a genuine philosopher to believe in the possibility of a fusion of the two realms, and he was too
much of a genuine kabbalist to wish for it."
Puerta Del Cielo, a discourse on kabbalah and religious themes of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in relation to Occidentalism and Platonic philosophy. Among few texts of the Kabbalah written and directed toward common readership; criticized as
such.
Abraham Cohen Herrera, Epitome y Compendio de la Logica o Dialectica, reprinted and edited by Giuseppa Saccaro Del Buffa, with a critical introduction in English, CLUEB, Bologna, 2002.

Sources
Bartleby.com, German Jewish Encyclopaedia, independent genealogical research.

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This page was last edited on 11 May 2016, at 01:24 (UTC).

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