DARMON

DARMON (Garmon, Jarmon, Jarmona) , North African family. jacob b. isaac darmon (1460) was dayyan of Mahdia (Tunisia) and one of the main correspondents of Ẓemaḥ b. Solomon *Duran. mordecai darmon was a leading 17^th-century merchant in Tunis, where the kabbalist moses darmon (d. 1741) was dayyan of the Leghorn community. nehorai darmon (1682–1760), talmudist, poet, and disciple of Isaac Lombroso, succeeded him. His literary works were destroyed when the Jewish and Christian houses were plundered by Algerian soldiers (1752). What had been saved was published under the title Yeter ha-Baz (Leghorn, 1787). mordecai darmon, a wealthy scholar, was treasurer and adviser to the beys of Algeria before 1772. In 1783 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople and later established the new Oran community for which he built a synagogue. He wrote Ma'amar Mordekhai (Leghorn, 1781), a collection of homiletic explanations on biblical and talmudic passages. His sons-in-law, the dayyan Masʿud and Judah Darmon, wrote many poems. The latter also wrote an important work on the halakhah entitled Gur Aryeh (Leghorn, 1851). The poet joseph darmon was coauthor with Solomon Zarka of Tunis of Rinnah vi-Yshu'ah (2 parts, 1856–57). The merchant isaac darmon settled with his sons in Morocco. jacques darmon represented England in Casablanca and victor (Ḥayyim) darmon was Spain's representative in Mazagan. As a result of a false testimony brought by the governor of the town, he was summarily executed (January 1844). The affair had wide repercussions in Europe and was one of the causes of the 1859–1860 Spanish-Moroccan war. david darmon (1885–?), musicologist and lawyer in Tunis, wrote several works and essays among which are Le Réalisme dans la Musique (1906) and La Situation des Cultes en Tunisie (1932²) which contains much information on Tunisian Judaism.

bibliography:

Simeon b. Ẓemaḥ Duran, Yakhin u-Vo'az, 1 (Leghorn, 1782), nos. 9–10, 25–49; Bloch, in: rej, 13 (1886), 90–91; L. Godard, Description et Histoire du Maroc, 2 (1860), 611, 638; Miège, Maroc, 2 (1961), 87, 94–95, 186, 332; J. Lambert, Choses et gens de Tunisie (1912), 147; Hirschberg, Afrikah, 2 (1965), 132.

[David Corcos]