Accents in Hebrew
AÇAN (or ḤAZAN), MOSES: Identical per- haps with the Moses Ben Joseph Ḥazan, who lived in 1243 at Toledo, and maintained business connections with Alfonso X., the Wise, king of Castile. When Alfonso was in Cuenca in 1271, Moses Açan informed him of the business relations that existed between himself and the infante and Don Nuño de Lant, as well as the granders of Custile.
Bibliograpy; Mattyriço, Hist. de la Ciudad de Cuença, p. 312
M. K.
AÇAN (or ḤAZAN), MOSES DE ZARAGUA: Native of Catalonia, who flourished in the fourteenth century. He wrote a rimed treatise on chess in the Catalonian dialect, which he begins by referring to the creation of the world, and exhorts his fellow man to glorify the Creator by the practise of virtue. Favoring chess, he opposed all games of chance, particularly card-playing, which, he declared, would ruin all addicted to it. This treatise, a manuscript of which is preserved in the Escurial, was translated into Spanish in 1350, probably by a Castilian Jew,
Bibliography: De los Rlos. Estudios. p. 200; Steinschneider, Schach hei den Juden, p. 35; Kayserling. Bibl. Esp.-Port. Jud. p. 8.
M. K.
ACAZ, JACOB: Keeper of the royal lions in Saragossat. In 1884 or 1885, by order of King Pedro of Angon, Aenz took some lions to Navarre as a present to King Charles II. A certain Abraham Azen is mentioned in 1408 as his successor in Saragossa.
Bibliograpy: 31. Kayserting, in Rev. Ét. Juires, xxv. 243.
M. K.
ACBARA. See Okbara.
ACCAD or AKKAD (Archad, Septuagint, or in some manuscripts. Achad).-Biblical Data: Word occurring mice in the Old Testament (Gen. x. 10), us the name of a city; one of the four cities which formed the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod. The exact location is unknown. On the Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform tablets Akkad appears as the name of a city, and also in an inscription of Nebuchuudnezzar I. (about 1135B.C.), but the connection in which it occurs gives in hint of its locality or history. See "Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, iii, 170, 171. Some critics are inclined to identify this place with the city of Agade in northern Babylonia, of which Sargon I. was king about 3800B.C. In there is no positive proof that the two are identical. The word Akkad, as used both by Assyrians and Babylonians, occurs most frequently as a part of a royal title much affected both in early and in later periods. In the early inscriptions it is lugal Kengi (Ki) Uri (Ki), which appears in Semitic in the form shar (mât Shummēri u (mât) Akkadi; that is, king of Summer and Accad. There has been much controversy in recent times regarding the exact meaning of this title, and it can hardly be said that a conclusive decision has yet been. reached (see Babylonia). It is at least reasonably clear that both the Babylonian and Assyrian kings who bore it claimed, by its use, to govern the whole of Babylonia. In this use Accad designates northern Babylonia, and Sumer Southern Babylonia.
R. W. R.
—In Rabbinical Literature: The Jewish traditions differ as to the identity of Accnd. According to the Palestinian tradition (Targ. Yer. 1. And 11. to Gen. x. 10, Gen, R. xxxvii.), Accad is identical with Nisibis. Jerome and Ephrem Syrus, in their commentaries on the passage, accept this view. The Babylonian authorities considered Accad to Be the city of Bushkar (or Kashakar; see Rabbinowitch. Diḳduke Soferim" to Yoma, 10a, note 10; Jastrow, "Dict." p. 676), mentioned several times in the Talmud (e.g. Yoma, 10a). Its situation, however, is unknown.
Bibliograpy: Ginzberg, in Monatsschrift, xli. 486; Neubaner, G. T. p. 345,
L. G.
ACCENTS IN HEBREW: Symbols denoting vocal stresses on particular syllables in pronouncing words or sentences. 1. In every word we utter, one syllable is spoken with greater emphasis and clearer enunciation than the rest. About it, as the strongly stressed or accented element, the other unaccented, or rather less strongly accented, syllables are grouped. Thus, in the word "contradict" the last syllable is the bearer of the main accent; a weaker, secondary accent rests on the first, while the italicized intermediate syllable is accented. Similarly, in a sentence, some words are pronounced with marked distinctness, while others are spoken hastily, almost without a stop, and made to lean forward or backward, as the italicized words in "he is a man of the world"; "I knew it." Both the accent which belongs to every word in itself ("word- accent") and the one which indicates its rank in a sentence ("sentence-accent") are to be regarded as the vital force which welds disjointed speech-elements into harmonious sense-units. The stops become particularly noticeable when, in a larger complex of clauses, they serve to mark the limits of each clause and its relation to the others. Some pauses are bound to be made, on physical grounds, to take breath; it is nearly always so arrange that the logical pauses shall coincide with those intervals. In an ordinary page of English the word-accent is never indicated (as it is in Greek), nor do the signs of punctuation (.:;,) show all the stops which careful reading in accordance with sense (especially oratorical delivery or the forceful recital of a literary masterpicer) requires. In the Hebrew text of the Bible, on the contrary, is found an elaborate system of signs (notations of stresses, or Accents) by which the stronger as well as the weaker stresses. belonging to syllables and words are marked, so that a reader who is acquainted with the use of the symbols may recite the sacred texts correctly and, in appearance at least, intelligently, without considering grammar or sense.
2.The Hebrew (Aranmir) word (
Hebrew characters) ((Hebrew characters)). plural
(Hebrew characters) ((Hebrew characters)), which is used in the Masorah in the Name.' sense of "accent."accents," denotes in the first pluer, "taste" (in the literal
sense, as in Ex. xvi. 31); then, "judgment," "good sense" (see 1 Sam. xxv. 33), in Talmudic Hebrew, "sense" ((Hebrew characters)
"words of sense"; (Hebrew characters) admitting of more than one
sense"). This is the oldest term which thus conclusively proves that the Biblical system of accentuation was primarily designed to mark the
various degrees of logical, or sense, pausation. This
method of punctilious distribution of great and
small pauses led, however, to a peculiar intonation
in a half singing style which is called Cantillation; this may still he heard in (orthodox) Jewish
Synagogues. The Accents have the secondary function of marking this intonation, each symbol being
equal to several musical notes. Hence their appellation in Arabic, laḥn, plural alḥan, as early as
Ibn Koreish, and the Hebrew term (Hebrew characters) "melody."
plural (Hebrew characters) .
On the term "trop" (the same as the English "trope," in the sense of a musical cadence) used by the Jews in their vernaculars, see Berliner, "Beiträge
