NAHON

NAHON, family of rabbis and community leaders of Portuguese origin, in various cities of morocco . R. ISAAC BEN JOSEPH NAHON (mid-16th century) was a rabbi of the community of Spanish exiles (Heb. megorashim) in fez and a signatory of its takkanot in 1545. Apparently either BENJAMIN (Joseph's father or brother) or JOSEPH was the author of Sefer ha-Derashot (Neubauer, Cat Bod 998). In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Nahons were international merchants in algiers ; the family originating in Tetuán . ISAAC (d. 1730) was rabbi in Tetuán. During the 18th and 19th centuries the family was prominent in marrakesh , mogador , and particularly tangier , where they built the Great Synagogue. They greeted sir moses montefiore on his trip to Morocco in 1864. JONAS BENASULI (b. 1888) was an architect in Tangier. MOSES (Moïse; b. 1870), a distinguished educator, Francophile, and the inspector of the Alliance Israélite Universelle schools throughout Morocco, was active in several philanthropic societies, as were the Nahon women. Other members lived in London, Gibraltar, and Leghorn, Italy. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.M. Toledano, Ner ha-Ma'arav (1911), 61ff., 101–2; I. Laredo, Memorias de un viejo tangerino (1935), 120–2, 267–72; Hirschberg, Afrikah, 2 (1965), 310.