Autograph of a Rabbi Benyamin ben Shlomo Malka on book: The Book of Praises of the Righteous, Part One,

Casablanca [1930], in Judeo-Arabic.

ספר שבחי צדיקים, חלק ראשון, קזבלנקה.
ערבית-יהודית.
הרב שלמה (סלמון) מלכה

Autograph / dedication of a Rabbi Benyamin ben Shlomo Malka on front endpaper with his stamp.

94 pp., hard cover, 19 x 14 cm.

Condition: cover worn, rubbed , spine over taped; tear to front endpaper; yellow /light brown paper.

Rabbi Shlomo (Salmon) Malka (August 14, 1878 – April 4, 1949) was a Jewish arbitrator, thinker, judge, biblical commentator, and leader of the small Jewish community in Sudan.
Shlomo Malka was born in the town of Aspelo in the Tafilalet region of Morocco on 15 Av, 1878. As a youth, he studied at the yeshiva in his hometown. In 1896, he married Hannah, née Assouline (1882–1952), who was born in the village of Tinghir.
In 1892, he immigrated to Israel with his wife, continued his studies at the yeshivas of Tiberias and Safed, and was ordained a rabbi. He later served as a judge in the rabbinical court in Tiberias.
In 1906, he accepted the request of Rabbi Eliyahu Bechor Hazan, the Chief Rabbi of Alexandria, and went with his family to Omdurman, Sudan, to become the rabbi of the Jewish community there. Sudan had a small Sephardic Jewish community of a few hundred people, founded by the migration of several families to Sudan beginning in the late 19th century. Upon his arrival in Sudan, one of his first acts was to manage the conversion to Judaism of a number of Jewish women who had been forced to convert to Islam during the time of the Mahdi. He served as the community’s rabbi, mohel, shochat, and cantor, but he earned his living as a merchant and owned an oil mill, a food processing station, and a tile factory. Gradually, the center of the Jewish community in Sudan moved from Omdurman to Khartoum, and in 1920, Rabbi Malka moved there as well. Over the years, he established himself not only as the leader of the Jewish community, which at its peak numbered around 1,000 people, but also as a well-known figure in Khartoum, respected by both Christians and Muslims. He taught the Bible to Khartoum’s Protestant pastor, Father Bolos (Paulus), and to other Jewish and non-Jewish students. He was a guest of honor at many official events held in Khartoum, and after his death, his funeral was attended by Christian and Muslim dignitaries. Rabbi Malka made long visits to the Jewish community in Egypt every year, including to visit his daughter, who lived in Alexandria with her family. In 1952, he also visited Israel, met with the chief rabbis, and discussed with them the establishment of a Talmud Torah in Khartoum (members of the Jewish community in Sudan studied in Christian-European schools due to the lack of a Jewish school). Rabbi Malka wrote regularly for the Jewish-Egyptian newspaper Al-Shams, published in Cairo in literary Arabic and edited by the Zionist journalist Saad Malka. Over the years, he wrote over 200 articles for the newspaper