LONGO, SAADIA BEN ABRAHAM:

By: Richard Gottheil, M. Seligsohn

Turkish Hebrew poet; lived at Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century. A manuscript in the Bodleian Library (Neubauer, "Cat. Bodl. Hebr. MSS." No. 1986) contains a collection of Longo's poems on various subjects; letters written by him to contemporary scholars and by them to him; a poetical correspondence between Longo and David Onkeneira; and a paper entitled "Naḥal Ḳedumim," in prose interspersed with verse in which occur 1,000 words beginning with א, an arrangement similar to that which was followed in the "Elef Alfin" of Ibn Laṭimi.

Some of Longo's dirges were published under the title "Shibre Luḥot" (Salonica, 1594). To them is prefixed a chronicle of Jewish writers and their works, entitled "Seder Zemannim." Longo wrote, besides, poems on many works of his contemporaries; these poems are printed at the beginning of the works to which they refer.

G. M. Sel.