Eleazar beRabbi Qallir

Eleazar beRabbi Qallir (Hebrew: אלעזר בירבי קליר, romanized: ʾElʿāzār beRibbi Qallir; c. 570 – c. 640), also known as Eleazar ha-Kalir,[note 1] was a Byzantine Jewish[1] poet whose Hebrew-language liturgical verses or piyyuṭim are sung during significant religious services, especially in the Nusach Ashkenaz rite, as well as in the Italian Nusach and well as the Romaniote rite.

[3][4] Although his poems have had a prominent place in printed ritual and he is known to have lived somewhere in the Near East, documentation regarding details of his life has been lost to history, including the exact year and circumstances of his birth and death.

He is said to have been the disciple of another 6th-century composer of piyyuṭim, Yannai, who, according to a certain legend, grew jealous of Eleazar's superior knowledge and caused his death by inserting into his shoe a scorpion whose sting proved to be fatal.

While such a custom is known to have existed among Jews and Syriac Christians, others claim that the explanation put forward by ben Jehiel is not acceptable since Qallir is not the name of the poet but that of his father.

[6] Another interpretation holds that the name was derived from the poet's or his father's hometown:[3] the Italian city Cagliari,[6] Calais, Cologne, Callirrhoë in the Transjordan,[12] or Edessa in Syria (F.

[3] Kirjath Sepher has been identified with the biblical place in Judea of the same name (Wolf Heidenheim),[3] with Sippar on the Euphrates (Filosseno Luzzatto),[13] and with Cagliari (Civitas Portus), in Italy.

[6] The theory that he lived in Italy is based upon the premise that he wrote double qerovoth (קרובא, special piyyuṭim) for Jewish holidays;[14][15] although Tosafot[16] and Asher ben Jehiel[9] assert that he did not write any for the extra festival days celebrated in the Diaspora.

[6] The earliest references to Qallir seem to be in a responsum of Natronai ben Hilai (c. 853),[19] in the Sefer Yetzirah commentary of Saadia Gaon,[20] and in his "Agron",[21] as well as in the writings of Jacob Qirqisani.

It may be that the stories of Yannai growing jealous of him are based in fact because the patterns of rhyme, acrostic, repetition, and refrain in his piyyuṭim are much more complex than those of his master.

His predilection for rare words, allegorical expressions, and aggadic allusions make his writings hard to understand[6] – some describe him as a "Hebrew version of Robert Browning".

[6] With the awakening of linguistic studies among the Jews and with the growing acquaintance of the latter with Arabic, his linguistic peculiarities were severely criticized (e.g., by Abraham ibn Ezra,[30] a criticism which centuries later influenced the maskilim in their disparagement of Qallir[3]); but the structure of his hymns remained a model which was followed for centuries after him and which received the name "Kaliric",[6] (or "Kalliri"[3]).