NAḤHMIAS, IBN

NAḤHMIAS, IBN (15^th–16 centuries), family of Hebrew printers from Spain. david ibn naḤmias, his brother samuel, and David's son samuel left Spain in 1492 and made their way to *Constantinople. There they published *Jacob b. Asher's Turim in 1493 (5254). The correctness of this date, written out in words in the colophon, has been doubted by scholars such as M. *Steinschneider (Juedische Typographie, 1938, 17), who assume an error of ten years. More recently, the case for the 1493 date has been strongly defended by A.K. Offenberg (see bibliography). After an interval of over ten years, the Ibn Naḥmias brothers printed a Pentateuch with Rashi, including haftarot with David Kimḥi's commentary and the Five Scrolls with that of Abraham ibn Ezra (1505–06). Several other books followed, among them Alfasi's Halakhot and Maimonides' Code (both 1509), and three works by Abrabanel, the only ones printed in the author's lifetime. Samuel Sr. died in 1509 or 1510, and David ibn Naḥmias about a year later. David's son Samuel carried on, alone or with a partner, to 1518, when the press was leased to others. The first two works printed (Turim and Pentateuch) have as *printer's mark a Magen David surrounded by leaves and flowers.

bibliography:

A.K. Offenberg, in: Studia Rosenthaliana, 2 (1969), 96–112 (incl. illus. and bibl.); A. Yaari, Ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Kushta (1967), 17–18, 59ff.; idem, Diglei ha-Madpisim ha-Ivriyyim (1944), 3, 123; A. Freimann, Thesaurus typographiae hebraicae saeculi xv (1924), ci, 4; Rosanes, Togarmah, 1 (1930²), 316–8.