In 1848, he was commissioned by the Jewish community of the latter city to travel through the southern countries to collect alms for the poor of Jerusalem.

In 1854 he undertook a second tour to collect funds for the construction of the Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter, which led him in 1859 to Yemen, British India, Egypt, and Australia.

The result of this journey was his momentous ethnographic work, entitled `Even Sapir,[1] a travel diary and vignette of Jewish life and history in Yemen.

Saphir was the first Jewish researcher to recognize the significance of the Cairo geniza, as well as the first to publicize the existence of the Midrash ha-Gadol, both later studied with great panache by Solomon Schechter.

[2] In the years 1833–1885, Saphir helped print the book Ḥemdat Yamim (reprinted Jerusalem 1977) by the arch-poet of Yemen, R. Shalom Shabazi, and even added an introduction to it.