ר׳ יצחק בן משה הלוי דוראן

ר׳ יצחק בן משה הלוי דוראן (c.1350–c.1415), known as Profiat Duran or האפודי, was a Catalan physician, grammarian, philosopher and one of medieval Judaism’s sharpest anti-Christian polemicists. Probably born near Perpignan, he studied Talmud as well as philosophy and science and later served as tutor in the Crescas household. During the violence of 1391 he was forcibly baptised and appears in Christian records as Honoratus de Bonafide. After escaping and openly returning to Judaism, he transformed personal catastrophe into scholarship. His satirical letter אל תהי כאבותיך was written so subtly that some Christian readers initially mistook it for praise. כלימת הגוים offered a systematic historical critique of Christian texts and doctrine. מעשה אפוד, completed in 1403, is an important Hebrew grammar embedded in a broader programme for renewing Jewish learning; חשב האפוד treats calendar and astronomical calculation. He also wrote an influential commentary on the Rambam’s מורה נבוכים. His attempted journey east and his death place remain uncertain, so this map does not claim that he reached the Land of Israel.