Jehuda Cresques

Who was Jehuda Cresques?

Jehudà Cresques, also known as Jafudà Cresques, Jaume Riba, and Cresques lo Juheu, was a converso cartographer in the early 15th century.

Son of Abraham Cresques, a famous Jewish cartographer, he was born in a Jewish family in Majorca, in the Majorcan-Catalan speaking part of Crown of Aragon, in present-day Spain. Together he and his father were the probable authors of the famous Catalan Atlas of 1375.

Cresques' work was highly sought after; in 1390 John I of Aragon paid the princely sum of 60 livres and 8 sous for one of his maps. After the Aragonese persecutions of 1391 he converted to Christianity, at which time he took the name Jaume Riba, Jacobus Ribus, in Latin. he appears to have remained in Majorca for a considerable time and to have become known to the people there as "lo jueu buscoler", the map Jew, or "el jueu de les bruixoles", the compass Jew.

It has long been believed that Jehuda Cresques is the same person as 'Mestre Jacome', a Majorcan cartographer induced by the Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator to move to Portugal in the 1420s to train Portuguese map-makers in Majorcan-style cartography.'