Abraham Yahuda

Abraham S. Yahuda
Yahuda in his youth
Born	1877 Jerusalem, Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem
Died	1951
Scientific career
Fields	Writer, Linguist, Teacher
Institutions	University of Madrid, University of Berlin, New School for Social Research

Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951) (Hebrew: אברהם שלום יהודה‎‎) was a Jewish polymath, teacher, writer, researcher, linguist, and collector of rare documents.

Abraham Shalom Yahuda was born in Jerusalem to a Jewish family originally from Baghdad. During his early life he studied under his brother Isaac Ezekial Yahuda. In 1895, at the age of fifteen, he wrote his first book entitled Arab Antiquities. Two years later, in 1897 he attended the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. Afterwards he began teaching in Berlin from 1905 to 1914. Later, during the First World War, he relocated to Madrid where he continued teaching from 1915 to 1922. Eventually Yahuda would relocate once again to New York and continue his career at the New School for Social Research.

During his lifetime Yahuda was a notable linguist and writer, translating and interpreting many ancient Arabic documents including various works of pre-Islamic poetry and medieval Judeo-Arabic texts. In 1935 he published The Accuracy of the Bible, a work which would spark a significant amount of international discussion.

After his death in 1952 his book Dr. Weizmann's Errors on Trial was published. The work is a scathing attack upon Zionist policies that Yahuda had felt irreparably damaged relations between Jews and Arabs.

Upon his death many of Yahuda's vast collection of rare documents were donated to the Jewish National and University Library, including about fifteen hundred documents. Much of the donated material was of Arabic origin, however, several hundred items were in ancient Hebrew as well. Also included were a number of documents from other countries, including a number of illuminated manuscripts and unpublished documents penned by Sir Isaac Newton. The collection of 7,500 handwritten theological papers was granted recognition within UNESCO's “Memory of the World” registry, recognizing documents which should be preserved for future generations.