Yihye Bashiri

– d. 1661[1]), known by his pen-name Avner bar Ner ha-Sharoni,[2] and by the acronym Maharib (moreinu harav yihye bashiri), was a Yemenite Rabbi, professional scrivener and sofer of the Masoretic Text whose works of Hebrew manuscripts now account for many now stored in public libraries across the globe, including the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Rab.1276; Rab.

The son of Abraham ben Saadya al-Bashiri, Rabbi Yihye Bashiri lived with his family in the Yemeni territory of ar-Raḥabah near the village of al-Ḥema, a three-hour walking distance north of Sana’a.

[5] Since printed books were very rare in Yemen, a gifted scribe was often employed as an amanuensis in transcribing important Hebrew literary works, but especially in supplying the community with prayerbooks and Torah codices.

Many times, the one who ordered the book had special preferences in content, which accounts for the variants found in texts made by a single copyist.

Thus, in the preface to the Tiklāl Qadmonim copied by the Yemenite scribe Shalom Qorah in 1938, he notes: "Be apprised that the Baladi-rite prayer books (Arabic plural: tikālil) of our teacher and Rabbi, Yihye Bashiri, may his merit rebound into the life of the world to come, are not at all identical, while some of them are found (on the most-part) based after the printed [Spanish] editions; the reason being that he was scribe and would write for everyone according to his preferences.

[7][8] In essence, the rendition used by him in this undertaking was largely based on Maimonides' version of the Jewish prayers, found in his Mishneh Torah, with the addition of other ancient material, such as the Aramaic Megillat Antiochus with a Judeo-Arabic translation.

[9] That same year (the 1929th year of the Seleucid era = 1618 CE), he also copied the collection of homilies on the Torah, known as Midrash HaGadol, in which he also shed light on its anonymous author, saying that it was first compiled by "Rabbi David b. Amram, of blessed memory, a man of the city of Aden, in the land of Yemen.

[13] Rabbi Bashiri also made a handwritten copy of Nathan ben Jehiel's seminal work, the Arukh.

[16] The Pentateuch codices penned by Rabbi Yihye Bashiri were considered authoritative by the Yemenite Jews, as far as their accuracy touching the Masoretic Text is concerned, and his younger rabbinic votaries who came after him have given to his work the honorific title "the Masorah of Rabbi Yihye Bashiri".

[17] The texts of old Yemenite Siddurs copied by Bashiri are an invaluable source for comparing the variae lectiones (Textual variations) of liturgy before the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud.

), and she brings the same items and their value into the marriage, over which things her husband takes full responsibility, although they are deemed as merely a loan unto him; meaning, he is able to freely make use of them while married to her, but must return them unto her father in the event of his wife's early death.

In Yemen, the standard value of a woman's nedunya was written in her ketubba as being "one-hundred qaflas" (the qaflah being a unit of weight that was equal to a dirham of about 3.0 – 3.36 grammes).

One of the enactments made in Sana'a in 1646, at the direction and insistence of Rabbi Yihye Bashiri, was to amend the Ketubbah (marriage contract) so that the value listed as his wife's nedunya, as well as all financial obligations pledged by the husband to his wife, such as the tosefet (additional jointure), be exacted in the local currency of the state with its adjustment, namely, its real value, rather than merely by what was signified as its nominal value based on the fixed sum of money of "one-hundred silver-[alloyed] qaflas" written in the ketubba.

During the reign of the Zaydi Muslim monarch of Sana'a, Imam Al-Mu'ayyad Muhammad, known to all by his kunya, "Abu 'l-Qasim",[23] the Jews of the city stood in danger of extermination, which was occasioned by the following:[24] Certain of the king's non-Jewish subjects had accused the people of Israel over the death of one of the king's sons, when, in fact, the Jews' accusers had taken the king's son to a secluded place and murdered him, and then dumped his body in the street belonging to the Jews.

The Jews of the city were then gathered together in haste, in the midst of that place called the Maidan,[25] both men, women and children.

Swear unto me by your life, and by the duration of your kingdom, that you shall acquit Israel of all guilt in this case, if your son shall rise up alive once again, in the presence of all the people, and shall declare with his own mouth who it was that killed him, so that you will be avenged of him."

Rather, these things happened only to show unto man his great powers, and that the blood of the souls of innocent men might not be laid to your charge."