Parchi, Estori Ben-moses

Parchi, Estori Ben-Moses a noted Hebrew scholar, was a native of Provence, and belonged to those exiles who were driven from France in the year 1306, under Philip IV, the Fair, one of the most rapacious, perhaps the most cruel sovereign who ever sat on the throne of France. At the time of the expulsion Parchi must have been a young man yet, for in the introduction to his work he gives us a description of the miseries which he had to undergo in the following words: "They drove me out from the college; naked I had to leave my father's house, as a young man, and was obliged to wander from country to country, from people to people, whose languages were foreign to me." Parchi found a resting-place in Palestine, where he wrote his וָפֶרִח בִּפתּוֹר, which treats on the topography of Palestine, and is especially valuable for the geography of the Holy Scriptures, the Talmud, and the Middle Ages, for numismatics and chronology. It was first published at Venice, 1549, and has been edited with a very valuable introduction by H. Edelmann (Berlin, 1846 and 1852). See Furst, Bibl. Jud. 1:259; Zunz, in Asher's Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (London, 1841), 2:393-448; Gratz, Gesch. d. Juden, 7:268; Frankel's Monatsschrift, 1851, 1852, p. 526; Jost, Gesch. d. Judenth. ut. s. Sekten, 3:62; Zunz, Zur Geschichte u. Literatur, p. 462, 535, 536. (B. P.)