דוד עדני

David ben Amram Adani, Rabbi David ben Amram HaAdani (דוד עדני), was a rishon of Yemen who lived, it seems, in the first half of the fourteenth century. He sat in the city of Aden, where he served as nagid, the title borne by the head of the Jewish community of Aden from the twelfth century on, and as chief of its rabbanim. He was known by some as David ben Amram the nagid of the city of Aden, and his forebears are thought to have held the same office through the eleventh to thirteenth centuries.

He is known above all for his Midrash HaGadol, a large and comprehensive midrash on the whole Torah, gathering midrashei halacha and midrashei aggadah from the early rabbinic sources, part collected from earlier works and part his own. As nagid he had access to rare sefarim and oral traditions, and he cites them throughout the work; for that reason the Midrash HaGadol is a source of the first rank for recovering lost midrashim that lay before him, among them the Mechilta d’Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and the Sifrei Zuta. He also composed midrashim on Megillat Esther and Megillat Eichah.

Little else is known of his life beyond his gift for poetry. What survives of his verse is the rhymed Hebrew poem he set at the head of each parasha in the Midrash HaGadol, a Judeo-Arabic poem for the Yom Kippur tefillot called Nadid er-Rachamim, a poetic introduction to the halachot of shechita, and an Aramaic poem signed with his name in acrostic.

His dates are known from his correspondence with Rabbi Yehoshua HaNagid, a descendant of the Rambam. In 1346 Rabbi Yehoshua sent him more than a hundred teshuvot answering Rabbi David’s questions and doubts on the Sefer HaMitzvot and the Mishneh Torah; most of the questions concern apparent contradictions in the Rambam that could only be settled by checking the exact text of the Rambam’s sefarim that Rabbi Yehoshua held. The opening of Rabbi Yehoshua’s reply is full of titles of honor for Rabbi David, whom he calls the faithful sage, nasi of the land of Yemen.

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