AMZALAK, MOSES BENSABAT

AMZALAK, MOSES BENSABAT (1892–1978), Portuguese scholar and economist. Amzalak was born and educated in Lisbon, combined a successful business career with encyclopedic academic activity, became professor of philosophy and later dean of the Lisbon School of Economics and Finance, and was president of the Portuguese Academy of Sciences and chancellor of the Lisbon Technical University. His main interests were economic history, history of economic thought, and marketing. A devoted Jew, he headed the Lisbon Jewish community for an entire generation. His publications are extensive, extending beyond economics to Oriental languages, Jewish history, bibliography, and related subjects. He wrote on rare works of Judaica of the 17^th and 18^th centuries in Spanish and Portuguese, which he reproduced in facsimile from the copies in his own extensive library. He wrote works on several economists of Marrano extraction, such as Joseph *Penso de la Vega, Duarte Gomez Solis, and Isaac de *Pinto. The bibliography of Amzalak's publications exceeds 300 entries including Do Estudo da Evolução das Doutrinas Económicas em Portugal (1928), História das Doutrinas Económicas da Antiga Grécia (12 vols., 1942– ), and História das Doutrinas Económicas da Antiga Roma (6 vols., 1953– ).

bibliography:

A. Elmaleh, Professeur Moses Bensabat Amzalak (1962). add. bibliography: G. Nahon, in: rej, 138 (1979), 487–8; J.B. Glass and R. Kark, Sephardi Entrepreneurs in Eretz Israel: The Amzalek Family, 1816–1818 (1991).

[Menahem Schmelzer]