Sefer ha-'Arukh, Nathan ben Jehiel, Pesaro: Gershom Soncino, 1517

196 leaves (11½ x 7½ in.; 292 x 190 mm). COLLATION: 1-14⁶, 1-3⁶, 15-29⁶, 30⁴=196 leaves, woodcut floral title border; misfoliated in print. Title strengthened at margin, holes repaired. Owners' notes on title page and verso; two words of printed text on title page, reading "in the land of Italy," eradicated. A few leaves remargined, final leaf, with some worming mounted from another copy. Lightly stained and soiled; some worming. Modern half calf. 

Vinograd, Pesaro 44; Habermann, ha-Madpisim B'nei Soncino 63.

A comprehensive lexicography by Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome (1035-c. 1110), a member of one of the four Roman families who trace their ancestry to the time of the destruction of the Second Temple. In addition to being a talmudic scholar and thoroughly conversant with the breadth of rabbinic literature, Nathan was also an accomplished linguist. In the present work he explicates, in alphabetical order, the many difficult terms in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds as well as in the Targumim and the Midrashic literature; in hundreds of cases he also provides the pertinent etymology. Nathan's detailed explanations include material of historical and bibliographical value, and descriptions of Jewish customs.

The title page of this book originally carried the information that it was printed "in the land of Italy." Scholars have posited that this imprecise localization, which appears in several of Gershom's imprints, may have indicated that the peripatetic Soncino began the printing of this work "on the road" somewhere between Ortona and Rimini. The colophon however is more specific and states that the completion of the work occured in Pesaro.