Brit Olam on Sefer Chasidimברית עולם על ספר חסידים
Baghdad · 1798
חי
Chida
Chida
1724 CE–1806 CE · Acharonim · Cairo
Hayyim Joseph David Azulai, known as the Chida (an acronym of his name), was born in Jerusalem around 1724 and became one of the most prolific and influential Jewish scholars of the eighteenth century. A master of Kabbalah, halakha, and Jewish history, he spent much of his life traveling throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, serving as a representative of the Jerusalem community and collecting rare manuscripts and books. He authored over eighty works, including Birkei Yosef (his glosses on the Shulchan Aruch), Kisei Rahamim (on the minor tractates), and Shem ha-Gedolim (a biographical-bibliographic lexicon of Jewish sages). His erudition, piety, and diplomatic skill earned him respect across Jewish communities, and he died in Livorno, Italy in 1806, leaving behind an enormous intellectual legacy that continues to inform Jewish study and practice.
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Stop 1 of 31764–1769Rabbinate
CairoקהירEgypt
What they did here
For five years he held the rabbinate of Cairo's Jewish community, a stretch during which he located a number of Genizah caches of old manuscripts and deepened his familiarity with books and their authors.
Cairo in this era
After the Ottoman conquest of 1517 Cairo's Jewish community took in exiles from Spain and Portugal; its 16th-century scholars included Rabbi Bezalel Ashkenazi, and the young Isaac Luria grew up there before moving to Safed. In the 1660s the city was also touched by the movement around Shabbetai Tzvi.
About Cairo
Cairo, at the head of the Nile delta, grew from two foundations: Fustat, the garrison town built by the Arab conquerors in 641, and al-Qahira ('the Victorious'), the walled city founded by the Fatimid dynasty in 969, where the mosque of al-Azhar opened in 970-72 and became a great centre of learning. Under the Ayyubids (from 1171) and the Mamluks (1250-1517) it was one of the largest cities of the Islamic world. Fustat's Jewish community, home to Maimonides in the 12th century, left the Cairo Geniza, a vast store of medieval documents. Later ruled by the Ottomans and, from 1882, under British occupation, Cairo is the capital of modern Egypt.
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Chida’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Works(2)
Kaf Achatכף אחת
Baghdad · 1820
Related figuresאחOhr HaChaimSuggested by shared subject matter, not a documented teaching relationship.