הרב אבודרהם

Rav David Abudarham, known simply as the Abudarham, was a rishon of fourteenth-century Seville whose name is bound to his commentary on the tefillah. He lived in Spain around 5100/1340; a tradition brought in the Chida‘s Shem Gedolim makes him a talmid of Rav Yaakov ben Asher, the Baal HaTurim, and he tells that he lived in the house of the Rosh, Rav Asher ben Yechiel. His sefer draws on the early authorities on prayer, among them the work of Rav Yehuda ben Yakar.

His work, formally Chibbur Perush HaBerachot VeHaTefillot and known to all as Sefer Abudarham, he wrote — as he explains in his preface — because he found the people wanting in understanding of the tefillah, and he wished to give them the means to use it with knowledge. He gathered from the Bavli and the Yerushalmi, from the Geonim, and from the commentators down to his own day the explanation of each portion of the siddur, largely following the Sephardic minhag, and set out as well a systematic account of the Hebrew calendar. He noted at its close that the sefer was completed in Seville in 5100.

First printed in Lisbon in 5249/1489 — later reprinted in Morocco as the first printed sefer in Africa — it went through many editions and is a primary source for the peirush of the tefillah and the study of its minhagim. He is held to be an ancestor of Rav Shlomo Abudarham, chief rabbi of Gibraltar.