Hiyya ben Yitzhak haSefardi, haDayyan

Isaac ben Samuel ha-Sefaradi ibn al-Kanzī was a biblical exegete, halakhist, judge, and payṭan (liturgical poet) who was born either in al-Andalus or in Egypt to an Andalusī father. He is known from the Cairo Geniza to have been a judge of the Palestinian-rite court in Fustat from around 1090 to 1127. A member of the entourage of the nagid Mevorakh ben Saʿadya, he bore the titles “head of the house of study, aide of the exilarchate” (Aram./Heb. resh be rabbana ʿezer ha-nesiʾut) and “the great rabbi.”

In his responsa, Isaac ben Samuel provided answers to queries from as far away as Yemen. One of his responsa to Yemen is quoted in full by Isaac al-Fāsī. As an exegete, Isaac ben Samuel was a bridge between the early classical period of Saʿadya Gaon and Jonah ibn Janāḥ and the later school of Abraham ibn Ezra and David Qimḥī. He quotes his predecessors copiously, including Nathan ben Jehiel, lost or recently recovered works by Saʿadya, Ibn Janāḥ, Sherira Gaon, Japheth ben Eli, and Hay Gaon, as well as his contemporaries of the Andalusian school, Judah ibn Balaam and Moses ibn Chiquitilla.

Margoliouth published part of Isaac’s commentary on the books of Samuel from a manuscript in the British Library copied in the sixteenth century by a certain Michael ben David. Nasir Basal has identified another large section of the same commentary in the Firkovich collections. Isaac refers in this work to his commentaries on Joshua, Judges, and Kings, and in fact produced commentaries on all of the former prophets, but these survive only as quotations in other works, including his own. Among his other published texts is a translation into Arabic and commentary on ʿ Im le-fi vaḥorkha, a piyyuṭ by Saʿadya.

Numerous Geniza documents relating to Isaac have been identified. They include communal records and legal documents bearing his signature or in his hand, a responsum on how best to teach children to read Hebrew (defending the traditional method of teaching individual letters before moving on to reading practice), and letters addressed to him from provincial judges. One of his two sons, Ḥiyya, succeeded him as judge in Fustat (1129–1159).

Marina Rustow

Bibliography

Basal, Nasir. “From the Earliest Buds of Sephardi Biblical Exegesis -- Fragments of the Commentary on I Samuel by Judah Ḥayyūj,” Peʿamim 68 (1996): 68–78 [Hebrew].

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967–93).

Margoliouth, G. “Isaac b. Samuel’s Commentary on the Second Book of Samuel,” Jewish Quarterly Review, o.s. 10 (1898): 385–403.

Shtober, Simon. “Nofeha ve-Atareha shel Ereṣ-Yisraʾel be-Ferusho shel Rav Yiṣḥaq ben Shemuʾel ha-Sefaradi le-Sefer Shemuʾel,” Beit Miqraʾ 47 (2002): 219–36.

———. “Perush Shemuʾel le-Rav Yiṣḥaq bar Shemuʾel ha-Sefaradi—beyn Mizraḥ le-Maʿarav,” in Meḥqarim ba-Miqraʾ u-ve-Ḥinnukh Mugashshim li-Prof. Moshe Arend, ed. Dov Raffel (Jerusalem, 1996), pp. 159–170.

Simon, Uriel. “The Contribution of R. Isaac B. Samuel al-Kanzi to the Spanish School of Biblical Interpretation,” Journal of Jewish Studies 34 (1983): 171–78.

Tobi, Yosef. “Targumo u-Ferusho shel R. Yiṣḥaq ben Shemuʾel ha-Sefaradi la-Tokheḥa ‘Im le-fi vaḥorkha’ le-RaSaG,” Teʿuda 14 (1998): 57–68.

Cite this page

Marina Rustow. "Isaac ben Samuel ha-Sefaradi." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2013.<http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>