HANANEL BEN SAMUEL

HANANEL BEN SAMUEL (first half of 13th century), Egyptian (?) talmudist. There are no biographical details of Hananel, but he is known to have composed commentaries, which H.J.D. Azulai saw in manuscript, to the Halakhot of isaac alfasi on several tractates of the Talmud. The commentaries to Eruvin (Margoliouth, Cat, no. 479) and Kiddushin (Neubauer, Cat, no. 438/7) are extant, but they have not yet been published. S. Abramson in his Rav Nissim Ga'on (1965) excerpted from the commentary to Eruvin many of the quotations there from Nissim Gaon's commentary on that tractate. According to one view Hananel was head of the academy of Fostat in Egypt and Peraḥyah b. Nissim was his pupil. According to Steinschneider, his father was the nagid Abu Manzur, Samuel b. Hananiah, but in the opinion of Mann this is impossible. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Steinschneider, Arab Lit, 227 nos. 166–7; S.D. Luzzatto, in: Ha-Levanon, 3 (1866), 285f.; idem, in: Literaturblatt des Orients, 11 (1850), 242–5; Carmoly, in: Ha-Karmel, 6 (1867), 94; J. Horovitz, in: ZHB, 4 (1900), 155–8; S. Poznański, ibid., 186; Mann, Egypt, 1 (1920), 195 n. 2; S. Assaf, in: KS, 23 (1946/47), 237f. (Shlomoh Zalman Havlin)