Corcos, David
CORCOS, DAVID
CORCOS, DAVID (1917–1975), historian of Moroccan Jewry. Scion of the prominent Spanish-Moroccan *Corcos family of merchants and diplomats, Corcos grew up as part of the elite of Mogador and Moroccan Jewry. Educated at the French High School and Higher Institute for Economy in Casablanca, he moved to Agadir as a young man and opened an import-export company and wholesale outlet that supplied southern Morocco and the Souss region with sugar, tea, and grain. He was a large-scale exporter to Europe of carob, almonds, wool, tea, sugar, and especially grain.
He immigrated to Israel in 1959 with a rare library of 1,500 books on North African and Moroccan Jewry as well as hundreds of manuscripts passed down from generation to generation that belonged to his great-grandfather. He lectured on Moroccan Jewish history on Kol Israel radio, published many scholarly articles on Moroccan Jewry in the Jewish Quarterly Review, Zion, and Sefunot, and in 1976 published Studies in the History of the Jews in Morocco. Corcos was the editor for the Maghreb of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, writing over 250 entries on Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian Jewry. He also contributed to the Enẓiklopediyah Ivrit.
[Yitzchak Kerem (2nd ed.)]