שמואל אבן ג'אמע

Rav Shmuel ben Yaakov ibn Jama (Samuel ben Jacob ibn Jam’a), who lived in Gabes in North Africa — today Tunisia — across the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was a talmid chacham, a Talmudic lexicographer and a poet. He came from a family of rabbanim: his grandfather Rav Moshe ibn Jama, his father Rav Yaakov and his uncle Rav Avraham all corresponded with Rav Hai Gaon, and his father sat as av beit din of Gabes. Rav Shmuel learned from his father and counted Rav Hai Gaon too among his rebbeim; he served as a dayan in Gabes and, after his father’s passing, took his place at the head of the beit din. Alongside his Talmudic mastery he acquired wide learning in astronomy, medicine, philosophy and grammar, and some hold that he was trained as a physician. He was close with Rav Avraham ibn Ezra, who dedicated his Chai ben Mekitz to him and gave praise to his three sons — Rav Yehuda, Rav Moshe and Rav Yaakov, themselves prominent talmidei chachamim in Gabes.

His best-known work is Iggeret HaMofet on the laws of shechitah, written in Judeo-Arabic ( blend of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic) at the request of a benefactor named Moshe Yeshua ibn Imran. Its ten chapters run from the kosher and non-kosher species and the signs of their eggs, through the times when one may slaughter, the knife, the place and manner of the cut, the laws of tereifot, the koshering of meat, kisui hadam, and the signs of permitted fish and locusts. The sefer is written with great brevity, and its author does not hesitate to differ with the Geonim even while praising them, parting from Rav Saadia Gaon on several identifications. The Arabic original lies in the Bodleian Library in Oxford; Shlomo Zalman Chaim Halberstam established Rav Shmuel as its author, and Rav Nissim Levi published a new edition through Mossad HaRav Kook in Yerushalayim in 5778.

He wrote as well Sefer Agur, known also as Elef HaMagen, a supplement to the Aruch of Rav Natan of Rome, in which he drew on his general learning to explain Talmudic terms; its manuscripts survive in Parma and Cambridge, and Shlomo Buber printed it in full in 5647. Beside it stand a work of mussar, Kitab al-Zahdah, and chiddushim on masechet Sanhedrin that Rav Yitzchak ben Abba Mari of Marseille brings in his Sefer HaIttur.