Sol: An Epic Poem

Sol: An Epic Poem was published in 1883 by Henry Iliowizi (1850-1911), a rabbi and writer who taught for the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Tetuan, Morocco, from 1877 to 1880 before emigrating to America. The poem retells the story of Sol Hachuel, the Jewish girl from Tangier who was publicly beheaded in Fez in 1834 after refusing to convert to Islam, a martyrdom Moroccan Jews still honor under the name Sol the Righteous. Iliowizi’s Moroccan years gave him direct contact with such traditions, the same material that later fed his 1900 story collection The Weird Orient. As an early piece of American Jewish verse on a Sephardi subject, the poem carries real documentary interest beyond its devotional purpose. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.