SHEMARIAH BEN ELHANAN

SHEMARIAH BEN ELHANAN (d. 1011), scholar in egypt . According to the legend of Abraham ibn Daud (G.D. Cohen (ed.), The Book of Tradition (1967), 64), Shemariah was one of four captives who were taken prisoner in c. 970 while on a journey to collect contributions for the Babylonian academies, each of whom later established a school in a different country. Documents found in the Cairo genizah , apparently originating from Babylon, state that he studied during the gaonate of sherira , with whom and with whose son and successor, hai gaon , he corresponded, after he himself had become the head of the yeshivah at El Fostat. He was head of the local bet din and was famous as a preacher. He is referred to as "the av bet din of all Israel," possibly the title accorded the highest religious authority in the country. Shemariah wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs, which he dedicated to Judah b. Joseph Alluf of kairouan . He was in contact with the prominent rabbis of his day, such as Ḥushi'el of Kairouan and dunash ibn labrat , in spain , who composed a laudatory poem in his honor. His son-in-law was sahlan b. abraham , head of the Babylonian community at the beginning of the 11th century. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mann, Egypt, 1 (1920), 26–28, and index S.V.; Mann, Texts, 1 (1931), 86–89, 111 n. 5, 199–200 and index S.V.; S. Schechter, Saadyana (1903), 121–7; idem, in: JQR, 11 (1898/99), 643–50; Goitein, in: Tarbiz, 32 (1962/63), 266–72; Abramson, Merkazim, 156–73; idem, in: Tarbiz, 31 (1961/62), 195f. (Eliyahu Ashtor)