Solomon ben Samuel

SOLOMON BEN SAMUEL (14^th century), scholar living in Urgench, Transoxania (Uzbekistan). In 1339 he compiled a Hebrew-Persian dictionary, Sefer ha-Meliẓah, comprising over 1,000 alphabetical entries on the vocabulary of the Bible, Targum, Talmud, and Midrash. The author knew Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Aramaic and was well acquainted with the works of Jewish scholarship of the West, including *Rashi, whom he called "Solomon the Frenchman." There are manuscripts of Sefer ha-Meliẓah in the *Firkovitch and E.N. *Adler Collections.