Alfandari
# Alfandari

Alfandari was a family of eastern rabbis prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries, found in Smyrna, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. The name may be derived from a Spanish locality, perhaps from Alfambra. The following is a list of the chief members of the family:

* Aaron ben Moses Alfandari
* Elijah Alfandari
* Ḥayyim ben Isaac Raphael Alfandari the Younger
* Ḥayyim ben Jacob Alfandari the Elder
* Isaac Raphael Alfandari
* Jacob ben Ḥayyim Alfandari
* Solomon Eliezer Alfandari

Members of this family were to be found as of 1906 in Constantinople and in Beirut. A Portuguese family of the name Alphandéry still exists, as of 1906, in Paris and Avignon. In Avignon there was a physician, Moses Alphandéry, in 1506, and a Lyon Alphanderic, in 1558. Compare the names Moses אלפנדריך and Aaron אלפנדארק.

In addition to the persons mentioned above, there is known a Solomon Alfandari (Valencia, 1367), whose son Jacob assisted Samuel Ẓarẓa in tranṣlating the Sefer ha-'Aẓamim of pseudo-ibn Ezra from Arabic into Hebrew. A merchant, Isaac Alfandari, was wrecked in 1529 on the Nubian coast. In Israeli popular culture, the principal family in the 1973 film Daughters, Daughters is named Alfandari.

For a possible explanation of the name, see Steinschneider.

Henri Alfandari has been a French Member of Parliament since 2022.

