Memory🌳 Maghrebimedievale· dès 1300 EC· Published on August 4, 2026

The Encaoua Family

אנקאווה

(Alnakaoua)

Origin of the name, history and genealogy of the Encaoua lineage — a Jewish family name and the traces it left behind.

Sephardic rabbinical dynasty originating in Toledo (Castile). Rabbi Israel ben Joseph Alnkaoua (d. 1391) died a martyr during the Toledo pogroms. His son Rabbi Ephraim (1359-1442) fled to Tlemcen, Algeria.

Geographic origin: Tolède → Tlemcen

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Stewardship

This lineage is stewarded by: Bernard Bensaid, Ephraïm Alfred Enkaoua

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Place of Origin Diaspora Memory (transmitted)Regions reconstructed from documented origins and diaspora.

Journey Through Time2026

The Great Book of this lineage

The Great Book — Encaoua

Memory Probable

# Introduction Zakhor, which means "Remember" in Hebrew, is a digital platform dedicated to preserving and sharing the memory and history of the Jewish people and their lineages. The project is rooted in the work of historian Yerushalmi, whose research on Jewish memory and historiography has shown that the Jewish tradition has always placed special emphasis on remembrance and transmission of collective memory across generations. This platform brings together archival items, genealogical documents, family stories, and historical testimonies to create a living archive of Jewish heritage. Each Great Book—whether it concerns a family lineage, a community, or a place—contributes to the larger tapestry of Jewish memory and history. Zakhor operates on the principle that memory and history are distinct but complementary ways of understanding our past. Memory is lived and transmitted within families and communities; History is documented, analyzed, and interpreted. Both are essential to understanding who we are. By digitizing and organizing these materials, Zakhor makes it possible for the People of the Book to rediscover their roots, to understand their family narratives within the broader context of Jewish history, and to transmit this knowledge to future generations. Whether you are a descendant seeking your family memory, a researcher exploring Jewish history, or simply someone curious about the richness of Jewish heritage, Zakhor invites you to explore, contribute, and remember.

There are names that do more than designate a family: they trace a route. That of Encaoua — which registers and colophons have written as Al-Naqawa, Aln'kaoua, Ankawa, Enkaoua, N'Kaoua and twenty other ways — draws an arc that runs from the synagogues of Toledo to the mellahs of Morocco, from the talmudic academies of Tlemcen to the amphitheaters of the Sorbonne. It is the history of a Sephardic rabbinic lineage that the catastrophe of 1391 tore from Castile and that exile planted in Maghrebi soil, where it took root so deeply that it became, in Tlemcen, almost a cult.

This lineage bears a name that is said to mean "cleanliness," "purity" — al-nqawa, in Arabic [Dafina, The Names of the Jews of Morocco; Abraham I. Laredo, The Names of the Jews of Morocco, CSIC, 1978]. The meaning is felicitous for a family that was to make halakhic rigor, piety and transmission the continuous thread of its existence. But this book does not open with the name: it opens with what this family did and endured. A father burned alive in Toledo for not renouncing his faith; a son who crossed the Mediterranean and founded a community that would outlive him five centuries; dayanim bent over their registers in Salé and Mascara; a Parisian economist who, at the end of the twentieth century, looks back on the memory of his own to patiently reconstruct its thread.

This work follows this journey in the order in which it unfolded. It draws on manuscripts preserved in Oxford, Madrid, New York and Paris, on scholarly works devoted to Tlemcen and rabbinic Algeria, and on the genealogical inquiry conducted by a descendant of the lineage. What belongs to transmitted tradition will be stated as such; what the archive establishes will be distinguished from what memory recounts. For this family is among those where legend and document answer one another — sometimes confirming each other, sometimes disputing — and it is from this tension that its great narrative is born.

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# Chapter 1: Toledo, 1391 — the Martyrdom of Israël ben Joseph and the Candelabrum of Light

The book begins with a death. In the summer of 1391, Castile erupts in flames: from Seville, a wave of pogroms sweeps up the peninsula, carrying away the great Jewish communities of Spain in a season of forced conversions, massacres, and destruction [Ram Ben-Shalom, Martyrdom and Memory in 1391 Castile, 2004, ref:4 ; John Edwards, Popular Preaching and the Pogroms of 1391, 1992, ref:11]. Toledo, the intellectual heart of Iberian Judaism, is not spared. It is there that Rabbi Israël ben Joseph Al-Naqawa dies, as a martyr — delivered to the flames rather than renounce his faith [lineage dossier ; Didier Nebot, Le Manuscrit sacré, Éditions Erick Bonnier, 2026].

Israël ben Joseph (c. 1310–1391) was not unknown. He was the author of the Menorat ha-Ma'or, "The Candelabra of Light," one of the great ethical summas of medieval Judaism. Composed in Toledo in the fourteenth century, the work unfolds in twenty chapters the whole of rabbinic moral teaching: charity (tsedaka), prayer, repentance, humility, the study of Torah, the honor due to parents, the education of children, the sanctification of Shabbat and the festivals, family life and virtues [manuscript corpus "Menorat ha-Maor — The Candelabra of Light," ID 99aa7825]. It is a book that teaches how to live, and its author died living to the end what he had written about kiddoush ha-Shem, the sanctification of the Name.

Israël ben Joseph's Menorat ha-Ma'or must not be confused with the homonymous work of Isaac Aboab, which would later become more famous; it constitutes a distinct work of primary importance. According to the research of Ron Lasri (Ben-Gurion University), the copy preserved at the Bodleian Library under the call number MS. Hunt. 161 would be the reference copy — a manuscript on paper, in Sephardic script, produced around 1441, roughly half a century after the author's death [manuscript corpus ID 8aa893ab]. A second copy, precisely dated to 1441, survives under the call number MS. Opp. 146: its colophon names the scribe, Moses the ḥazzan, and his intended recipient, Joseph Hayyun [manuscript corpus ID 6d3aa2a3]. Thus Memory — the martyrdom transmitted from generation to generation — and Archive — these sheets from Oxford that one can still touch — meet on one and the same man: a master of ethics who sealed his teaching with his blood.

It should be noted that the presence of the Encaoua in Toledo predates this martyrdom. The corpus preserves an older trace of Rabbi Yitzhak ben Choushan Encaoua, a rabbinic figure of the thirteenth century, a disciple of Meïri of Perpignan and correspondent of Rashba of Barcelona, some of whose responsa are recorded in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Biblioteca Nacional de España [manuscript corpus ID 69a080dc and dafddb6d]. The lineage was thus already, before the catastrophe, embedded in the learned network of medieval Sephardic Judaism [Jonathan Ray, The Sephardic Frontier, 2006, ref:6 ; Yom Tov Assis, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, 2004, ref:7].

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Chapter 2: Exile and the Lion — Ephraïm Al-Naqua, Founder of Tlemcen (1359–1442)

Ephraim Al-Naqawa (1359–1442)

The son of Israël ben Joseph, Ephraïm ben Israël Al-Naqua (1359–1442), escaped his father's pyre. Ephraim Al-Naqawa is a fourteenth-century Sephardic rabbi, physician, and theologian, an emblematic figure of the Jewish community of Tlemcen, known to many Algerian Jews by the single name of the Rabb. Fleeing Spain after 1391, he was first received by the community of Marrakech, capital of southern Morocco, before traveling, by way of the port of Honaïn, to the city of Tlemcen, where he settled and founded the Jewish community that would carry his Memory for more than five centuries [lineage file ; Simon Schwarzfuchs, Tlemcen, mille ans d'histoire d'une communauté juive, 1997, ref:3].

Around this man, tradition wove one of the most famous narratives of Maghrebi Judaism. The tale is told that he arrived at the gates of Tlemcen mounted upon a lion, which he governed by means of a serpent in the manner of a bridle. The lion serving as his mount to travel to Tlemcen, and the serpent as a halter, impressed both the population and Sultan Abou Tachfin II in person. Legend adds that, alone capable of healing the sovereign's ailing daughter when the city's physicians had failed, he obtained as reward the authorization to found the Jewish community there [traditional account, encaoua.org ; HAL-SHS, halshs-01140049]. This miracle of the saint with lion and serpent belongs to the register of Memory, not of the archive ; yet it speaks a historical truth in its legendary form — the arrival of a learned refugee, physician as much as rabbi, whose wisdom and piety conquered a city.

Ephraïm was the Rab, the Master par excellence. He was the true founder of the Israelite community of Tlemcen and was in his time the Light of Israel. He died on November 13, 1442. His tomb became at once a place of pilgrimage — a hiloula that, each year, gathered considerable crowds, to the point that the veneration shown toward him sometimes troubled the guardians of strict orthodoxy, for it bordered on worship [Colette Zytnicki, The Tomb of Rabbi Ephraim Encaoua in Tlemcen, 2005, ref:5 ; Eliahou-Éric Botbol, Vie et destin de la communauté juive de Tlemcen, 2000, ref:9]. In this man, the lineage expressed its highest virtue: care for the other — the welcome of refugees fleeing Spain, medicine placed at the service of prince and pauper alike, the founding of a house for the wandering. The complete History of the city he founded is treated elsewhere, in The Great Book — Tlemcen ; this chapter retains of Tlemcen only what belongs properly to the Encaoua.

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# Chapter 3: Sha'ar Kevod Hashem — Ephraim's Theological Work and the Defense of Maimonides

Ephraïm Al-Naqua was not merely a legendary wonderworker: he was a theologian. His masterwork, the Sha'ar Kevod Hashem ("The Gate of the Glory of God"), a treatise on religious thought, survives today only in a small number of manuscript witnesses that recent scholarship has patiently catalogued. The most complete copy identified appears in a Sephardic manuscript copied in North Africa in the sixteenth century, preserved at Oxford under the shelfmark MS. Opp. 241; history's irony would have it that it sits alongside the sole known copy in the world of the Sefer Pé'a of Moïse ibn Tibbon [manuscript corpus ID 4b90b91a; after C. Sirat, 1980]. A second witness is housed in the composite collection MS. Hunt. 559, and a third, in cursive script, is preserved at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York under the shelfmark MS JTSA 969 [manuscripts corpus ID 351b12b4 and ad1ade55]. A fourth witness, purely hypothetical, is said to have belonged to the library of Samuel David Luzzatto in Padua before its dispersal in 1869–1870: it has not been located, and the hypothesis is acknowledged as such [manuscript corpus ID bd3cfd6e, report by Yves Bentura, 2026].

To this theological corpus is added a remarkable poem. Ephraïm composed a learned piyyut of fifty-one verses in honor of Moïse ben Maïmon — Maimonides — published in 1935 by Alexander Marx. This composition is among the most eloquent versified defenses of the Guide for the Perplexed to emerge from the Sephardic milieu in the wake of the Maimonidean controversies [manuscript corpus ID 79029c52]. It reveals a man who, far from shunning the intellectual debates of his age, took sides in the synthesis between faith and reason embodied by the great rationalist of Córdoba.

It is here that the lineage touches upon one of the cardinal virtues of the tradition of Israel: the contribution to Jewish thought and commitment to philosophical learning. In defending Maimonides and composing a theology of his own, Ephraïm inscribed his family in the long chain of those who refused to oppose study to piety. The rediscovery of his unique manuscript at the Bodleian Library — a notebook of some forty-nine pages unearthed among Oxford's holdings — was the subject of a recent historical essay that traces both the life of the Rab and the wandering fate of his writings [Didier Nebot, Le Manuscrit sacré — Mémoire et restitution, Éditions Erick Bonnier, 2026, corpus ID cf92ea27].

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# Chapter 4: Maghrebi Dissemination — Marrakech, Salé, Oran and the Moroccan mellahs

From Tlemcen, the lineage spread. The Encaoua appear, across the centuries, in the great communities of the Maghreb: in Marrakech, whose mellah sheltered one of the largest Jewish populations in Morocco [lineage dossier]; in Salé, Atlantic port facing Rabat, which became the principal center of the Moroccan branch; and finally in Oran, major port of western Algeria marked by a long Spanish presence [lineage dossier]. This geography is not mere scattering: it traces the map of a rabbinic family that, wherever it settled, held communal and judicial positions.

It is in Salé that the branch distinguished itself in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The corpus attests to Rabbi Mardochée (Mordekhaï) Encaoua, dayan of Salé, whose family was originally from Toledo, and whose son Raphaël would become the greatest rabbinic figure in Morocco of his time [lineage dossier; verified sheet Refael Enkaoua]. There too we encounter Rabbi Messod Encaoua, whom communal memory called Malakh Hashem, "the Angel of God," and Rabbi Mordehai Encaoua, later president of the Rabbinic Court of Tangier—so many bearers of the name who made religious magistracy a family patrimony.

In this dissemination, the lineage expressed one of the most constant values of Judaism: involvement in collective life. To be a dayan, to sit on the rabbinic court, to preside over a community, was not to exercise power but to assume a service—that of stating the law, of settling disputes, of protecting the weak according to the Law. The demographic and onomastic registers drawn up by Maurice Eisenbeth, then Chief Rabbi of Algiers, allow us to measure the rootedness of these families in North African society [Maurice Eisenbeth, The Jews of North Africa — Demography & Onomastics, Algiers, 1936, corpus ID 8a9bb129].

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# Chapter 5: Abraham Ankawa (1810–c.1890) — the Halakhic Dayan, between Salé, Mascara and Tlemcen

No figure in the lineage, after Ephraïm, was as prolific as Abraham ben Mordekhaï Ankawa. Born in Salé in 1810, rabbi and kabbalist, he belonged to a family probably of Spanish origin, established in Tlemcen and Salé, where his father Mordekhaï presided over the community for a time. After serving as dayan in his native city, he made around 1838 the journey to Livorno — the great center of Hebrew printing in the Mediterranean — to have his first works published there [Encyclopaedia Judaica, « Ankawa, Abraham ben Mordecai » ; encyclopedia.com]. He then left Morocco for Algeria, where he was rabbi in Mascara and founded a talmudic academy in Tlemcen — thus closing, four centuries later, the geographical circle opened by Ephraïm.

His printed work is considerable and covers all registers of rabbinic learning. Kashrut first: the Zekhor le-Avraham (Livorno, c. 1838), a versified exposition of the rules of terefot, then the Zevaḥim Shelamim (Livorno, 1858), a dual commentary on the laws of ritual slaughter according to Maimonides [corpus manuscripts ID dba1eae2 and 805ec0ac]. Liturgy next: the Kol Tehinna (Livorno, 1843), a collection of prayers for fasts and elegies; the Ḥukkat ha-Pesaḥ (1843), a Judeo-Arabic paraphrase of the piyyutim of the seder — precious testimony to the rabbi as transmitter of liturgy in the vernacular tongue, closest to the faithful [corpus manuscripts ID 9b62a8e5 and 3291fa4d]. Kabbalah finally: the Ḥomer ha-Dat he-Attik (1844), an abridgement of the Shefa Tal by Shabbetaï Sheftel Horowitz, and the ritual Ḥesed le-Avraham / Sha'ar ha-Shamayim (1845), enriched with mystical kavanot [corpus manuscripts ID e3f03b6d and 1781e567].

But his masterwork is the Kerem Ḥemer (Livorno, 1869 and 1871), a vast collection of responsa bringing together his own decisions and those of earlier rabbis, as well as ancient ordinances (takkanot) of the sages of Castile and Toledo — written memory of the exiled Sephardi [corpus manuscript ID b81b2752]. Scholarship has shown how this work, produced in the Algeria of French conquest, embodied a form of resistance: it asserted Jewish rabbinic authority at the very moment when colonial power was dismantling it, right up to the Crémieux Decree of 1870 [according to the works of A. Boum and J. Katz on the Kerem Hemer; Yosef Charvit, Élite rabbinique d'Algérie et Ereẓ Israël, 1998, ref:8]. His polemical writing Yaʿaneh la-Rabbim (1858), linked to a controversy with the rabbis of Algiers, moreover illuminates the tensions of the Algerian rabbinic world in the mid-century [corpus manuscript ID 213c391b]. In Abraham Ankawa, the lineage brought to its highest point talmudic learning and faithfulness to halakha — that conviction that the Law, spoken and transmitted, remains the bulwark of a people when history strips it of all other protections.

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# Chapter 6: Raphaël Encaoua (1848–1935) — the First Chief Rabbi of Modern Morocco

In Salé, on the 2nd of Tevet 5608 — that is, in 1848 — Rabbi Refael Enkaoua was born, son of Rabbi Mordekhaï Enkaoua, from the family originally from Toledo, and of Beïda bat Rabbi Refael Bibas, descended from the exiles of Castile [verified lineage record]. His dual ancestry sums up in itself five centuries of Sephardic history: on both sides, the blood of those whom 1391 and 1492 had driven from Spain. A student of Rabbi Yissakhar Assaraf, he was appointed to the rabbinical court at the age of twenty-two and founded a yeshiva in Salé around 1900 [verified lineage record].

His destiny shifted with the establishment of the protectorate. In 1918, the French authorities appointed him president of the high rabbinical appeals court established in Rabat — making him the first president of the High Rabbinical Court of Morocco, in other words the highest Jewish religious authority in the kingdom [lineage file; verified record]. In this position, he embodied a rare figure: that of a sage capable of preserving the autonomy of Hebrew law within a colonial administration, by dialogue with power without surrendering the essential. His reputation for piety and equity earned him, even during his lifetime, a veneration that Moroccan memory has not allowed to extinguish.

His erudition survives in the Ḥadad ve-Teima, a collection of Talmudic commentaries printed posthumously (Jerusalem, 1978, reissued in 2000) — the existence of this edition implying that an autograph manuscript or a copy circulated, whose call number remains to be identified [manuscript corpus ID de602ed2]. In Raphaël Encaoua were joined justice — the virtue that tradition places at the summit, for "justice, justice, thou shalt pursue" — and the humility of the servant of the community. He died in 1935, leaving the memory of a man whose authority rested less on title than on rectitude.

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# Chapter 7: From Algerian exile to the Sorbonne — Memory reconstructed by David Encaoua (born in 1941)

The history of the lineage might have ended with the end of Judaism in Algeria. The presence of the Encaoua in Oran and Tlemcen, attested until the independence of 1962, came to an end with the exodus that drove the Jews of Algeria and Morocco toward France [lineage file]. It was in this French diaspora that family memory found one last — and unexpected — guardian.

David Encaoua, born in Paris on December 24, 1941, belongs to this generation of transplantation. French economist, professor emeritus at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and associate researcher at the Paris School of Economics, recognized specialist in industrial economics, innovation economics and intellectual property, he held scientific responsibilities at the CNRS and collaborated with the OECD [verified lineage file]. His scholarly work belongs to a completely different order from that of his ancestors dayanim; and yet, it extends their deepest virtue — knowledge placed at the service of the common good, here in the form of scientific and economic knowledge.

For David Encaoua did more than pursue a career as a researcher: he turned back to his own. In the article "Des passeurs de pensée juive d'origine hispano-maghrébine : la lignée Encaoua," published in the journal GÉNÉALO-J no. 135 in autumn 2018, he reconstructed, as a descendant of the lineage himself, the intellectual and spiritual journey of four major figures of the family, from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, and catalogued the variants of the name [corpus ID 7dd8444e, Cercle de Généalogie Juive]. He subsequently devoted studies to Ephraïm, founder of Tlemcen, and to Messod Encaoua [ref:1; ref:2]. In this man, the lineage accomplished a gesture that the Jewish tradition holds as sacred: zakhor, the duty of memory — to remember, to transmit, to prevent the names of the fathers from being lost. It is also this onomastics that must be addressed: the patronym, declined as Al-Naqawa, Ankawa, Enkaoua, N'Kaoua and even Elnecave, derives from the Arabic al-nqawa, "cleanliness, purity" — a name that, through its graphic transformations, followed the family from Toledo to Paris without ever losing its meaning [Abraham I. Laredo, Les Noms des Juifs du Maroc, 1978; Maurice Eisenbeth, op. cit., 1936].

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Great Figures

Rabbi Yitzhak ben Choushan Encaoua (13th century, dates unknown) — The oldest attested Encaoua figure of the Iberian Middle Ages, predating by approximately one century the 1391 martyrdom. Disciple of the Meïri of Perpignan and correspondent of the Rashba of Barcelona, he inscribed the family within the learned network of medieval Sephardic Judaism. Partial collections of his responsa are reported at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Biblioteca Nacional de España, under catalog references still to be determined by systematic review of Hebrew manuscript catalogs.

Rabbi Israël ben Joseph Al-Naqawa [ישראל אלנקאווה] (c. 1310 – 1391) — Author of the Menorat ha-Ma'or, an ethical summa in twenty chapters composed in Toledo, he was one of the great masters of morality in medieval Judaism. During the 1391 pogroms, he died a martyr, given to the flames rather than abjure his faith. His work survives notably in two manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, including a copy dated 1441. His death sealed in blood the teaching he had given on the sanctification of the Name.

Rabbi Ephraïm Al-Naqua / Aln'kaoua [אפרים אנקאווה] (1359 – 1442) — Son of the foregoing, physician, rabbi and theologian, he fled Spain after 1391 and, via Marrakech and the port of Honaïn, founded the Jewish community of Tlemcen. Author of the Sha'ar Kevod Hashem and a poem in defense of Maimonides, he was the Rab, patron saint whose tomb became a major pilgrimage site. Tradition depicts him entering the city mounted on a lion bridled by a serpent. He died on 13 November 1442.

Rabbi Mardochée (Mordekhaï) Encaoua (1779 – 1840) — Dayan of Salé, descended from the family originating in Toledo, he was one of the links in the Moroccan branch and the father of Raphaël Encaoua. His presidency and magistracy within the Salé community illustrate the enduring judicial and communal rootedness of the lineage in Atlantic Morocco at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Rabbi Abraham (Avraham) ben Mordekhaï Ankawa [אברהם אלנקאווה] (1810 – c. 1890) — Born in Salé, dayan and then rabbi of Mascara, founder of a talmudic academy in Tlemcen, he was one of the greatest Hispano-Maghrebi halakhists of the 19th century. Prolific, he had his works printed in Livorno on kashrut, liturgy and Kabbalah, crowned by the collection of responsa Kerem Ḥemer (1869–1871), which preserves the ancient ordinances of the sages of Castile. His work embodied the resistance of rabbinical authority against colonial conquest.

Rabbi Messod Encaoua (1826 – c. 1885) — Rabbi of Salé, communal memory gave him the epithet Malakh Hashem, "Angel of God," in homage to his piety. A figure of local sanctity, he belonged to the constellation of Encaoua masters who made Salé a first-rank rabbinical center in the 19th century, and was the subject of a modern study dedicated to his life and teaching.

Rabbi Raphaël (Refael) Encaoua [רפאל אנקווה] (1848 – 1935) — Born in Salé, appointed to the rabbinical tribunal at twenty-two, founder of a yeshiva around 1900, he was established in 1918 as president of the high rabbinical appeal court of Rabat — first Grand Rabbi of modern Morocco. Renowned for his justice and humility, he preserved the autonomy of Hebrew law under the protectorate. His erudition survives in the Ḥadad ve-Teima, printed in Jerusalem in 1978.

Rabbi Mordehai Encaoua (1905 – 1978) — President of the Rabbinical Court of Tangier, he prolonged in the 20th century the judicial vocation of the lineage, in an international city at the crossroads of worlds. His office bears witness to the continuity of the dayan function among the Encaoua, from Salé to Tangier, through the upheavals of contemporary Morocco.

David Encaoua [דוד אנקאווה] (born 24 December 1941) — Economist, professor emeritus at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, specialist in industrial economics, innovation and intellectual property, he collaborated with the CNRS, the OECD and the Paris School of Economics. A descendant of the lineage, he became its historian: his 2018 study in GÉNÉALO-J reconstructs the family's itinerary from the 13th to the 20th century and consecrates the duty of memory proper to this house.

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Conclusion

Seven centuries separate Yitzhak ben Choushan, correspondent of the Rashba in thirteenth-century Toledo, from David Encaoua, professor at the Sorbonne in the twenty-first. Between these two men stretches one of the longest continuous narratives that a Sephardic lineage can offer: a father burned for his faith, a son who founds a Jewish city, a dynasty of dayanim that spreads from Tlemcen to Salé and from Mascara to Tangier, a final exile to France, and a descendant who gathers all of this to write it down.

If one were to name, above all, the virtue that this lineage expressed most fully, it would be the faithful transmission of Law and Memory. The Encaoua were neither princes nor merchants: they were transmitters. They transmitted ethics in the Menorat ha-Ma'or, halakha in the Kerem Ḥemer, liturgy in Judeo-Arabic to the faithful of Passover, justice at the apex of Morocco's courts, and finally the very memory of the family in the pages of a genealogical journal. Through them, a virtue that the tradition of Israel has carried across centuries and continents — masoret, the chain of transmission — found one of its most stubborn vehicles.

The name they bore, al-nqawa, "purity," was therefore not mistaken. Not that no shadow crossed their history — the excessive veneration rendered to the tomb of the Rab troubled the rigorists, controversies pitted Ankawa against the rabbis of Algiers — but because at each generation, someone ensured that nothing essential was lost. From Toledo in flames to reconstructed memory, the Encaoua lineage held, against history, the thin and tenacious thread of remembrance.

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Variants of the name (40)

One name, a hundred faces.

The same surname, transcribed differently across languages, eras, and diasporas.

Latin39

Al-NakavaAl-NakawaAl-NaqawaAl-NaquaAln'kaouaAlnakaouaAlnakarAlnequaAluncawiAncouaAnkaouaAnkaouahAnkavaAnkawaAnkawahAnkoaAnkouaAnqawaAnqawahCahouaCanouiCaouaEncaoua (Al-Naqawa)Encaoua (Al-Naqua)EncaouahEncaounaEnkaouaEnkawaKaouaN'kaouaNakaouaNakawaNakuaNaquaNkaouaElnecaveElnekavéNekavaANCAWA

עברית · Hebrew1

אנקאווה

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Notable figures

1.
Rabbi Israel ben Joseph Aln'kaoua
Auteur du Menorat ha-Maor, martyr de Tolède
2.
Rabbi Ephraïm Aln'kaoua
Grand rabbin de Tlemcen, saint protecteur
3.
David Encaoua
Économiste, professeur émérite Sorbonne
4.
Rabbi Abraham Ankawa
Dayan, auteur du Kerem Ḥemer (Livourne)
5.
Rabbi Raphaël Encaoua
Premier président du Haut Tribunal Rabbinique du Maroc
6.
Rabbi Messod Encaoua
Rabbin de Salé, « Ange de Dieu » (Malakh Hashem)
7.
Rabbi Mardochée Encaoua
Dayan de Salé
8.
Rabbi Mordehai Encaoua
Président du Tribunal Rabbinique de Tanger
9.
Rabbi Avraham Ankava
Sage de la famille Enkaoua / Ankava, dont l'article rappelle que le nom dérive de « al-Nqa

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Works & texts (25)

Documents published on Zakhor linked to this lineage through their keywords.

juridique1250–1500 (siècle)

Responsa de Yitzhak ben Choushan Encaoua — copie BnF

Yitzhak ben Choushan Encaoua (XIIIᵉ s.)

Recueil partiel des responsa de Yitzhak ben Choushan Encaoua (XIIIᵉ siècle), figure rabbinique Encaoua la plus ancienne du Moyen Âge ibérique, antérieure d’environ un siècle au martyr Israël ben Joseph Aln’kaoua de Tolède (†1391). Disciple du Meïri de Perpignan, correspondant du Rashba de Barcelone. Le manuscrit, signalé par le collectif Encaoua (chapitre 4), serait conservé à la Bibliothèque nationale de France sous la cote ms. hébreu 389 — cote à confirmer auprès du département des manuscrits. Provenance : 1 Bibliothèque nationale de France — département des manuscrits, fonds hébreu Notice codicologique — origine à préciser ; écriture : séfarade ; état éditorial : Inédit. — Source : Mémoires des Manuscrits Juifs du Moyen-Âge Maghrébin (MMJMM), https://mmjmm.org/corpus/catalogue/to-locate-encaoua-yitzhak-responsa-bnf.

juridique1250–1500 (siècle)

Responsa de Yitzhak ben Choushan Encaoua — copie BNE

Yitzhak ben Choushan Encaoua (XIIIᵉ s.)

Second témoin présumé des responsa de Yitzhak ben Choushan Encaoua (XIIIᵉ s.), signalé par les travaux du collectif Encaoua. Conservé selon ces sources à la Bibliothèque nationale d’Espagne (Madrid) — cote précise à identifier par dépouillement du catalogue des manuscrits hébreux. Provenance : 1 Bibliothèque nationale d'Espagne (Biblioteca Nacional de España) — département des manuscrits Notice codicologique — origine à préciser ; écriture : séfarade ; état éditorial : Inédit. — Source : Mémoires des Manuscrits Juifs du Moyen-Âge Maghrébin (MMJMM), https://mmjmm.org/corpus/catalogue/to-locate-encaoua-yitzhak-responsa-bne.

philosophiqueXIVe siècle (avant 1391)

Menorat ha-Maor — Le Candélabre de la Lumière

Rabbi Israel ben Joseph Aln'kaoua (Encaoua)

Œuvre éthique majeure en vingt chapitres, composée par Rabbi Israel ben Joseph Aln'kaoua (Encaoua) à Tolède, en Espagne, au XIVe siècle. Le Menorat ha-Maor (Le Candélabre de la Lumière) est une compilation de matériaux aggadiques et halakhiques couvrant les grands thèmes de la vie religieuse : charité, prière, repentance, humilité, étude de la Torah, honneur des parents, éducation des enfants, mariage, morale commerciale et bonnes mœurs. L'ouvrage débute par un long poème acrostiche sur le nom de l'auteur, suivi d'une préface en prose rimée. Chaque chapitre est introduit par un poème portant l'acrostiche « Israel ». Écrit dans le contexte troublé de la fin du judaïsme espagnol, il servait de guide éthique et rituel pour les communautés juives d'Espagne. Rabbi Israel mourut sur le bûcher à Tolède en 1391, aux côtés de Judah ben Asher, lors des massacres de l'été 1391. Il est le père de Rabbi Ephraïm Aln'kaoua (Encaoua), qui fuira vers Tlemcen après ces pogroms.

philosophique1391, Toledo, Spain

Menorat HaMaor

Yisrael ben Yosef Alnaqua

litteraireXVe siècle

Poéme d’Ephraim Al-Naqua en l’honneur de Moshé ben Maimon

Ephraïm Aln'kaoua

**Poème d'Ephraïm Al-Naqua en l'honneur de Moshé ben Maïmon** Composition poétique hébraïque en 51 versets, ce piyyut savant édité par Alexander Marx en 1935 (poème n° 19 de sa série *Texts by and about Maimonides*) constitue l'une des plus éloquentes apologies versifiées du *Moreh Nevukhim* (Guide des Perplexes) issues du milieu séfarade post-controverses maïmonidiennes. La traduction française, due à David Encaoua avec le concours d'André Benzenou, en restitue à la fois la rigueur argumentative et la densité allusive. **Structure et progression argumentative.** Le poème se déploie selon une architecture en cinq mouvements. Les versets 1 à 14 louent la méthode du Guide : démarche progressive, table « bien dressée » des chapitres (v. 3), arguments « sans falsification ni tromperie camouflée » (v. 4), élucidation du Targoum, des Séfirot et des noms des chérubins (vv. 6-13). Les versets 15 à 18, polémiques, visent le « grand rab fils de Naḥman » — Naḥmanide (Ramban) — accusé d'opposer au Guide « des paroles profondes mais peu convaincantes » et « des lumières qui obscurcissent plutôt qu'elles n'éclairent ». Les versets 19 à 33 dressent le catalogue des questions résolues par Maïmonide : prophétie et apparitions angéliques (vv. 21-22), sens des sacrifices (v. 23), preuves rationnelles de l'existence de Dieu adossées à Aristote (vv. 25-27), théodicée et secret de Job (vv. 28-30), prière du juste comme du pécheur (vv. 31-33). Les versets 34 à 42 abordent les *secrets de la création* (*ma'aseh bereshit*) et le *char d'Ézéchiel* (*ma'aseh merkavah*), puis l'histoire des origines — Adam, Ève, le serpent, Caïn, Abel, Seth — comme matrice de la transmission des langues et des sagesses. Les versets 43 à 51 reviennent à la polémique : disqualification des détracteurs « usant de mots obscurs », bénédiction sur Maïmonide promis au jardin d'Éden, et couronnement final du *Guide* « pour son travail de démystification ». **Enjeux doctrinaux.** Le poème prend parti, sans ambiguïté, pour la légitimité de la théologie philosophique contre la lecture exclusivement kabbalistique du judaïsme. Trois thèses y sont défendues : (1) la *raison aristotélicienne* est un instrument valide pour la *Torah*, dès lors qu'elle se subordonne à la révélation (vv. 25-27) ; (2) les récits ésotériques de la Bible — *bereshit*, *merkavah*, sacrifices, prophétie — sont susceptibles d'une exégèse rationnelle qui n'abolit pas leur sacralité mais l'éclaire (vv. 23, 34-36) ; (3) l'obscurité doctrinale n'est pas une vertu : opposer au Guide « des paroles vaines » revient à trahir l'intelligence (vv. 16-17, 43). En cela le poème s'inscrit dans la longue postérité des controverses maïmonidiennes (1232, 1305) et témoigne de leur prolongement dans la diaspora séfarade des XIVᵉ-XVᵉ siècles, où la défense du *Moreh* est devenue un marqueur identitaire face aux courants anti-rationalistes provençaux et catalans. **Auteur et contexte.** Ephraïm Al-Naqua (Anqawa, Encaoua), né en Castille vers 1359 et mort à Tlemcen en 1442, est le fondateur de la communauté juive de Tlemcen après les persécutions de 1391 en Espagne. Médecin, talmudiste, kabbaliste lui-même — auteur du *Sha'ar Kevod Hashem* —, il incarne ce paradoxe séfarade tardif d'un savant qui maîtrise les disciplines ésotériques tout en défendant la légitimité du rationalisme maïmonidien. Le tombeau du *Rab*, à Tlemcen, est demeuré jusqu'au XXᵉ siècle un lieu de pèlerinage majeur du judaïsme nord-africain. **Source et établissement du texte.** Le poème a été édité par Alexander Marx dans *The Jewish Quarterly Review*, New Series, vol. 25, n° 4 (avril 1935), au sein d'un dossier de pièces hébraïques relatives à Maïmonide. La présente traduction française, première à notre connaissance, a été établie par David Encaoua avec l'aide préalable d'André Benzenou.

religieux≈ 1400–1700 (estimation)

Sha'ar Kevod Hashem — manuscrit dit « de Shadal » (hypothèse Bentura, non localisé)

Ephraïm Aln'kaoua

Quatrième témoin hypothétique du Sha’ar Kevod Hashem d’Ephraïm Aln’kaoua, formulé par Yves Bentura (rapport avril 2026). L’hypothèse est qu’un exemplaire aurait été présent dans la bibliothèque de Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal) à Padoue, avant sa dispersion en 1869-1870. Ce manuscrit, s’il existe, n’est aujourd’hui pas localisé. Provenance : 1 Hypothétiquement : collection Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal), Padoue 2 Dispersion du Fonds Luzzatto après 1865-1870 3 Non localisé à ce jour Notice codicologique — origine à préciser ; écriture : à identifier ; état éditorial : à confirmer. — Source : Mémoires des Manuscrits Juifs du Moyen-Âge Maghrébin (MMJMM), https://mmjmm.org/corpus/catalogue/lost-shadal-sha-ar-kevod-hashem.

philosophique1400–1500 (siècle)

Sha'ar Kevod Hashem — copie A

Ephraïm Aln'kaoua

Manuscrit séfarade copié en Afrique du Nord au XVIᵉ siècle (Sirat 1980), contenant deux œuvres : le Sefer Pé’a de Moïse ben Samuel Ibn Tibbon (fol. 10r-54v) — seule copie connue au monde de ce traité philosophique — et le Sha’ar Kevod Hashem d’Ephraïm Aln’kaoua (fol. 58r-78v), seul exemplaire complet identifié pour cette œuvre. La cote actuelle MS. Opp. 241 correspond au n° 939 du catalogue Neubauer (item 2 pour la pièce Aln’kaoua) ; concordance confirmée par Judith Olszowy-Schlanger (EPHE, 2000) et Colette Sirat (DAAT n° 5, 1980). Le Sha’ar Kevod Hashem — « La Porte de la Gloire de Dieu » — est l’une des deux œuvres majeures d’Ephraïm Aln’kaoua (vers 1359-1442), fondateur de la communauté juive de Tlemcen après l’exode castillan de 1391 ; le traité défend le Guide des égarés de Maïmonide contre les critiques de Naḥmanide. Provenance : 1 Collection David Oppenheim (Prague, fin XVIIᵉ s.) 2 Bodleian Library, depuis 1829 Notice codicologique — origine Maghreb ; écriture : maghrébine ; feuillets : 77 folios ; catalogues anciens : Catalogue Neubauer 1886 · 939,2 ; état éditorial : Édition partielle disponible. — Source : Mémoires des Manuscrits Juifs du Moyen-Âge Maghrébin (MMJMM), https://mmjmm.org/corpus/catalogue/bodleian-neubauer-939-2 ; manuscrit conservé à Bodleian Library (Oxford).

religieux1400–1500 (siècle)

Sha'ar Kevod Hashem — copie B

Ephraïm Aln'kaoua

MS. Hunt. 559 (= Neubauer 1258) est un recueil composite séfarade de la fin du XVᵉ siècle (314+ folios, écriture séfarade, datation 1476-1500, origine principalement Espagne). Les ff. 305-314 forment une unité distincte d’origine probablement provençale, où se loge la section Aln’kaoua : item 2 du recueil (Neubauer 1258,2), correspondant au Sha’ar Kevod Adonai d’Ephraïm Aln’kaoua. La concordance MS. Hunt. 559 = Neubauer 1258 est attestée par le Tableau I du catalogue Neubauer 1886 et confirmée par la notice IIIF Biblissima ; l’identification de la section Aln’kaoua est confirmée par le supplément Beit-Arié & May (1994). Provenance : 1 Recueil composite séfarade compilé fin XVᵉ siècle (Espagne pour la partie principale, Provence probable pour les ff. 305-314) 2 Collection Robert Huntington (1671-1681) 3 Bodleian Library, depuis 1693 Notice codicologique — origine Maghreb ; écriture : séfarade ; catalogues anciens : Catalogue Neubauer 1886 · 1258,2 ; état éditorial : Édition partielle disponible. — Source : Mémoires des Manuscrits Juifs du Moyen-Âge Maghrébin (MMJMM), https://mmjmm.org/corpus/catalogue/bodleian-neubauer-1258-2 ; manuscrit conservé à Bodleian Library (Oxford).

philosophique≈ 1430–1450 (estimation)

Menorat ha-Ma'or — manuscrit unique au monde (MS. Hunt. 161)

Israël ben Joseph Aln'kaoua (vers 1310-1391)

Copie réalisée environ cinquante ans après la mort de l’auteur (1391), soit vers 1441, sur papier, en écriture séfarade. L’œuvre comprend vingt chapitres couvrant l’ensemble du programme éthique rabbinique : tsedaka, prière, Torah, mitsvot, gemilout hassadim, honneur du Shabbat et des fêtes, vie familiale, vertus, etc. Selon les recherches de Ron Lasri (Université Ben-Gourion), elle constitue la première anthologie hébraïque à traduire systématiquement de larges portions de l’aggadah talmudique de l’araméen vers l’hébreu. Manuscrit unique au monde (base de l’édition princeps Enelow 1929-1932). Provenance : 1 Copie réalisée vers 1441 2 Collection Robert Huntington (chapelain à Alep, 1671-1681) 3 Bodleian Library, depuis 1693 Notice codicologique — origine Maghreb ou Espagne post-1391 ; copiste : anonyme (copie vers 1441) ; écriture : séfarade ; catalogues anciens : Catalogue Neubauer 1886 · 1485 ; état éditorial : Édition critique disponible. — Source : Mémoires des Manuscrits Juifs du Moyen-Âge Maghrébin (MMJMM), https://mmjmm.org/corpus/catalogue/bodleian-ms-hunt-161 ; manuscrit conservé à Bodleian Library (Oxford).

litteraire1441 (date exacte)

Menorat ha-Ma'or — copie de Joseph Hayyun (1441)

Israël ben Joseph Aln'kaoua (vers 1310-1391)

Copie séfarade datée de 1441 du Menorat ha-Ma’or d’Israël ben Joseph Aln’kaoua, identifiée à la Bodleian sous la cote MS. Opp. 146 (anciennement Opp. 954 ; Neubauer n° 1312). Le colophon du fol. 147b précise le copiste — Moïse le ḥazzan (officiant chantre) — et le destinataire — Joseph Hayyun (patronyme attesté dans plusieurs milieux séfarades du XVᵉ siècle ; identification à confirmer). Les ff. 297-312 sont d’une seconde main, révélant une histoire matérielle prolongée. Provenance : 1 Copie datée 1441 (colophon fol. 147b : Moïse le ḥazzan pour Joseph Hayyun) 2 Réfection partielle ultérieure (ff. 297-312) 3 Collection David Oppenheim (1664-1736), chef-rabbin de Prague 4 Bodleian Library, depuis 1829 (collection Oppenheim) Notice codicologique — origine milieu séfarade occidental (Espagne ou diaspora post-1391, à préciser) ; copiste : Moïse le ḥazzan ; écriture : séfarade ; catalogues anciens : Catalogue Neubauer 1886 · 1312 ; état éditorial : Édition critique disponible. — Source : Mémoires des Manuscrits Juifs du Moyen-Âge Maghrébin (MMJMM), https://mmjmm.org/corpus/catalogue/bodleian-opp-146 ; manuscrit conservé à Bodleian Library (Oxford).

religieux1500–1800 (siècle)

Sha'ar Kevod Hashem — copie cursive (JTSA New York)

Ephraïm Aln'kaoua

Troisième témoin identifié du Sha’ar Kevod Hashem d’Ephraïm Aln’kaoua. Conservé au Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) à New York sous la cote MS JTSA 969, ce manuscrit est caractérisé par une écriture cursive — trait qui le distingue des deux témoins bodléiens (séfarade pour MS Hunt. 559, orientale pour MS Opp. 241). Provenance : 1 Bibliothèque du Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York 2 Provenance antérieure à préciser (catalogue Marx) Notice codicologique — origine à préciser ; écriture : séfarade ; état éditorial : Édition partielle disponible. — Source : Mémoires des Manuscrits Juifs du Moyen-Âge Maghrébin (MMJMM), https://mmjmm.org/corpus/catalogue/jtsa-969-sha-ar-kevod-hashem ; manuscrit conservé à Jewish Theological Seminary (New York).

religieuxXIXᵉ siècle (non daté)

Bina la-Ittim — Avraham Ankava