FARRISOL, ABRAHAM

(c. 1451 -c. 1525)

Italian biblical scholar, geographer and polemicist. He was born in Avignon and lived in Ferrara and Mantua, working as a cantor and copyist. He represented Judaism before the Duke of Ferrara in a religious dispute with two Dominican monks. He wrote a commentary on the Torah, Ecclesiastes and Job, a defence of Judaism, and the first modern Hebrew work on geography.