ḤASAN (Hussein) BEN MASHI'AḤ

ḤASAN (Hussein) BEN MASHI'AḤ (tenth century), Karaite scholar. According to Ibn al-Hītī he lived in Baghdad, where he held religious disputations with the Christian scholar Abu Ali ʿIsā ibn Zarʿa. Sahl b. Maẓli'aḥ states that Ḥasan had disputations with saadiah gaon (d. 942), which seems chronologically unlikely. Ḥasan also wrote a polemical treatise against Saadiah, passages of which are incorporated in the Eshkol ha-Kofer of judah hadassi and in a manuscript in Leningrad. A remark of ibn ezra in the introduction to his commentary on the Pentateuch suggests that Ḥasan wrote biblical commentaries. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. Poznański, Karaite Literary Opponents of Saadiah Gaon (1908), 15f.; Mann, Texts, 2 (1935), index. (Leon Nemoy)