Abraham Bedersi
French poet
Abraham Bedersi (Hebrew: אברהם בדרשי) was a Languedoc Jewish poet; he was born in Béziers (whence his surname Bedersi, or native of Béziers). The dates of his birth and death have not been ascertained.
An elegy which he composed during his youth, upon the Confiscation of the Books of the Law, is supposed by some scholars to refer to the burning of the Talmud in Paris about the year 1242; by others, to the confiscation of the Talmud in Aragon in 1264, as the direct result of the Barcelona controversy. If the latter view is correct, Bedersi may well have flourished about the year 1240 (Leopold Zunz, Z.G., p. 413).
As appears from the letter sent by Bedersi to Don Vidal Solomon (Ḥotam Toknit, p. 4), he went early (perhaps in 1273) to Perpignan, where he attended the lectures of Joseph Ezubi. He returned often to Perpignan and took an active part in its communal affairs. A number of his letters, contained in MS. cviii (72) of the Vienna Hofbibliothek, are written to prominent Jews in Barcelona, asking them to aid their less fortunate coreligionists.
At one time he lived at Arles, and in 1285, during the war of France with Roussillon, he took refuge in Narbonne.
The public source identifies “Abraham Bedersi” as french poet. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Abraham, Bedersi and French.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4668765. VIAF identifies the subject as 44700813. The Library of Congress control number is nb2007025967. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1242, 1264, 1240 and 1273.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abraham Bedersi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.