BONAFOS, MENAHEM B. ABRAHAM

BONAFOS, MENAHEM B. ABRAHAM (also called Bonafoux Abraham of Perpignan; late 14th–early 15th century), philosophical author. Bonafos, who lived in France, is the author of a dictionary entitled Sefer ha-Gedarim ("Book of Definitions"), also called Mikhlal Yofi ("Perfection of Beauty"),   containing precise definitions of technical terms appearing in the Hebrew philosophical and scientific literature, particularly in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. The entries under each letter are divided into six sections according to the following classification: ethics and politics, logic, metaphysics, physics, mathematics and astronomy, and medicine. In 1567 the book was first published, with some notes, by Isaac b. Moses ibn Arollo in Salonika, and again in Berlin, 1798, with a commentary and additions by Isaac Satanow. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Renan, Rabbins, 740; Gross, Gal Jud, 476; REJ, 5 (1882), 254; G.B. de'Rossi, Dizionario storico degli autori arabi (Parma, 1807), 75; Wolf, Bibliotheca, 1 (1715), 763; Steinschneider, Cat Bod, 1719, no. 6341, 1983, no. 6546; A.Z. Schwarz, Die hebraeischen Handschriften in der National-bibliothek in Wien (1925), no 150.