שלמה מעתוק

Rabbi Shlomo (Salman) Ma’tuk (eighteenth century) was a chacham, paytan, astronomer and communal leader of Baghdad, whose piyutim entered the liturgy of the kehillot of Iraq and are sung to this day. He was famed across the Jewish East for his library — the greatest in Baghdad, holding above seven thousand volumes in print and manuscript, among them Arabic renderings of the Chumash, the Megillot and Sefer Daniel — and its catalog testifies to how the chachamim of Baghdad stood linked to the whole Sephardi world of learning.

His surviving poems carry the burdens of his community: many tell of the sufferings of Baghdad’s Jews under a tyrannical governor, and one of the most famous tells how he hid in a Turkish bath to escape the persecution; afterwards he moved with his family from Baghdad to Basra. As an astronomer he left writings on geometry, among them a work with commentary on the astrolabe, an instrument for measuring the stars. For the chachamim of the East, knowing the heavens served the halachot of the calendar.

When he passed away he was eulogized by the poet Saleh ben Yosef Masliach of Baghdad; his manuscripts found their way to the great collections, where they preserve the voice of Baghdad’s Torah in its quiet century.

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