Book of the Collection of Words: Introduction

David ben Abraham al-Fāsī was a prominent Karaite lexicographer who lived in Jerusalem. Little is known about the details of his life. As his name indicates, his family hailed from Fez, Morocco. Known in Arabic as Abū Sulaymān Dā’ūd ibn Ibrahim, David made contributions to the study of the Hebrew language that were influential among Karaite authors. Several later Jerusalem-based Karaites composed summaries of his Kitāb jāmi‘ al-alfāẓ (The Book of Collection of Words), a Hebrew-Arabic dictionary of the Bible, which drew on Arabic and occasionally Persian. David, like many of his contemporaries, accepted that some Hebrew words had two root letters. He utilized mishnaic Hebrew, despite his Karaite affiliation, and cited the Aramaic Targums. His dictionary often offers more than just the lexical meaning, as he engaged in exegetical, polemical, and other matters. David also wrote commentaries on Psalms and Song of Songs, neither of which survives in full.