This Great Book is the fruit of a collective effort, nourished by decades of historical, genealogical, and theological research. It retraces the history of a Sephardic Jewish family whose trajectory has, since at least the twelfth century, followed the great movements of the history of the Jewish people — from the Andalusian golden age to the contemporary exiles, by way of the persecutions, the rebirths, and the silent transmissions of knowledge.
The ambition of this Great Book is threefold. First, to gather into a single corpus the scattered knowledge about the Encaoua line — a name which, in its many spellings (Al-Naqua, Alnakaoua, Ankawa, Enkaoua, Encaoua), spans seven centuries of Mediterranean Jewish history. Next, to pay tribute to the “transmitters of thought” — those men and women who, generation after generation, handed down an intellectual and spiritual heritage of exceptional richness. Finally, to offer the descendants of this family, wherever they may be today — in France, in Israël, in Canada, in the United States, in Morocco, or elsewhere — a living, accessible, and shared place of memory.
The history of the Encaoua is inseparable from that of Sephardic Judaism. It constitutes one of its oldest and most continuous threads. From the first mentions in the responsa of the twelfth century to the contemporary academic works of David Encaoua and the genealogical research of Bernard Bensaïd, this family embodies the permanence of a scholarly tradition whose roots reach deep into the talmudic academies of Toledo, the caliphal courts of Cordoba, and the synagogues of Tlemcen. The name Encaoua is not merely a surname: it is the mark of a lineage in which each generation knew how to meet the challenges of its time while preserving the essence of what it had received.
This Great Book draws upon three categories of sources. First, the primary sources: rabbinic manuscripts preserved in the libraries of Oxford (Bodleian Library), Paris (BnF), Rome (Vatican Library), and Jerusalem; halakhic responsa published in Livorno, Tunis, and Jerusalem between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries; notarial deeds and civil registry records from the National Overseas Archives (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence. Second, the academic works: the articles and books of David Encaoua (Généalo-J, L'Harmattan), the studies of Haïm Zafrani on Moroccan Judaism, the research of Jessica Marglin on the Jews of the Maghreb, and the monumental Jewish Encyclopedia. Third, the living testimonies: Le Manuscrit Sacré by Didier Nebot (2026), nourished by the testimony of Fred Enkaoua, a direct descendant of the Rab of Tlemcen, and the genealogical research of Bernard Bensaïd on Geneanet.
The work is organized into nine parts and twenty-nine chapters. Part I explores the origins of the name and the first documented traces. Part II covers the intellectual and spiritual apogee of the Encaoua in medieval Spain. Part III is devoted to the four “transmitters of Jewish thought” identified by David Encaoua: Israël Al-Naqua, Ephraïm Al-Naqua, Abraham Ankawa, and Raphaël Encaoua. Part IV deals with the expulsion of 1492 and the diaspora that followed. Part V describes the rabbinic influence of the Encaoua in the Maghreb from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Part VI addresses the modern era, from colonization to the exiles of the twentieth century. Parts VII and VIII present the essential contributions of Didier Nebot and David Encaoua to the knowledge of this lineage. Part IX, finally, is dedicated to the genealogical research of Bernard Bensaïd.