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First edition of Apologie des Juifs, an important work on early Jewish history and literature by R. Moses Avigdor Chaikin.  Apologie des Juifs has a subtitle, étude historique et littéraire sur l'état politique et social des Juifs, depuis la chute de Jérusalem jusqu'á 1306, that is, Apology of the Jews, historical and literary study on the political and social state of the Jews, from the fall of Jerusalem until 1306. Apologie des Juifs is in three parts, the first, following the preface, is from the period of Jerusalem to Charlemagne to 787;  the second from the time of Charlemagne to the preparation of glosses (Tosafot) to the Talmud (1105); and the third through the persecution of French Jewry by Phillip IV the Fair in 1306.

R. Moses Avigdor Chaikin Rabbi and author; born at Sklow, government of Mohilev, in 1852, and removed at an early age with his father to St. Petersburg, where the latter became chief shoḥet. Chaikin was educated for the rabbinate, and obtained several rabbinical diplomas, among others one from Rabbi Spektor of Kovno. After the riots of 1881-82 he emigrated to Paris, where he served as rabbi of the Polish Jews from 1883 to 1887; but then returned to Russia and was rabbi at Rostov-on-the-Don from 1888 to 1889. Being expelled from Russia in 1890, he went to England, and in 1892 was appointed rabbi of Sheffield, England, and in 1901 of the Federation of Synagogues, London. Chaikin iwas also the author of Celebrities of the Jews (Sheffield, 1889).

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