CABESSA

CABESSA (Cabeça, Cabeção), Moroccan family of Spanish-Portuguese origin, found in the 13th century in Toledo, Spain. Forced to accept baptism, the Cabessa family was persecuted by the Inquisition, and fled to the Canary Islands and after 1530 to Morocco. ABRAHAM CABESSA, head of the Spanish community in the kingdom of Marrakesh, was minister to   the first Saadian sultan, whom he advised to take possession of Fez in 1549; he obtained many favors for his coreligionists. His brothers SAMUEL, financier of the court, and ISAAC, controlled Morocco's foreign trade. They particularly favored the English. When at the beginning of the 17th century freedom was granted to the Jews in certain European ports, the Cabessas extended their field of activities. ABRAHAM (II) settled in Marseilles in 1656; MOSES (d. 1636) settled in Hamburg; and ISAAC (II; d. 1699), MOSES (II; d. 1664), and AARON (d. 1699) settled in Amsterdam. SOLOMON (d. after 1700) directed the family business in Morocco. At the beginning of the 19th century, Solomon's descendants obtained from Spain permission to reside in Alicante and Almeria. They moved their business center to Oran, Algeria. Some of the family settled in Mogador, Morocco, where DAVID was U.S. consul before 1914. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: SIHM, Portugal, 4 (1951), 180, 208; 5 (1953), 20, 23, 120; T.S. Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade (1959), 127–30, 146; Corcos, in: Sefunot, 10 (1966), 7, 92–93, 110–1; ESN, 187–8; Bloch, in: REJ, 13 (1886), 85ff. (David Corcos)