Shelomo b. Ṣemaḥ

Description / Bio

Shelomo b. Ṣemaḥ (Abū Bishr Sulaymān b. Ṣemaḥ; fl. ca. 1020s–1040s CE) was a Jewish communal leader and scribe based in al-Ramla, the administrative capital of Fatimid Jund Filasṭīn. He was closely connected to the Palestinian yeshiva in Jerusalem. His origins may have been in Latakia: T-S 12.16 mentions a cantor and "scribe of our gate" (i.e., of the yeshiva) who also lived in al-Ramla, Shemuʾel b. Ṣemaḥ, possibly his brother, and identifies the family as "ibn Lādiqī." Shelomo b. Ṣemaḥ's letters show him to be fluent in rabbinic sources and biblical language. His main correspondent was Efrayim b. Shemarya, the leader of the Palestinian congregation in Fustat. The letters Shelomo wrote to Efrayim suggest that Shelomo was an intermediary on multiple fronts. In T-S 10J29.13 (PGPID 1545), Shelomo rebukes Efrayim for alienating congregants with his domineering behavior, reporting that a petition bearing over thirty signatures has reached Palestine complaining of his conduct and that congregants had defected to the Iraqi and Qaraite synagogues; he quotes Malachi 2:10 counseling patience and good governance. In another, T-S 13J34.11 (PGPID 1129), he advises Efrayim on a legal case involving the property of orphans, citing the talmudic principle that judges must protect orphans while not allowing them to consume others' assets. He also intercedes on behalf of a merchant in al-Ramla, Berakhot b. Hillel, asking Efrayim to protect him in his commercial dealings in Fustat. In one moving letter, T-S 18J3.9, (PGPID 1758), Shelomo gives an eyewitness account of the catastrophic earthquake that struck al-Ramla on Thursday, 12 Ṭevet (December 1033 CE). It describes walls crashing together, roofs separating from walls, new buildings collapsing, and residents fleeing into the streets, noting that the earthquake was preceded by darkening clouds, heavy rain, two large rainbows (one of which appeared to split), and a flash of fire in the southwest. Aftershocks continued for eight days, with the population sleeping outdoors, fasting, and crying out for mercy. He observes that many more would have died had the earthquake struck at night. The city governor and other officials pitched tents outside the city and were still there at the time of writing. A companion document, T-S Misc.28.93 (PGPID 1386), preserves the opening of a formal letter he wrote to the communities of Fustat probably shortly after the earthquake praising them for their generosity toward the survivors and acknowledging their aid to "the people of the city called Ramla" who had been left destitute. A third post-earthquake letter, Bodl. MS heb. b 13/54 (PGPID 4415), shows him mobilizing relief for victims, writing to Efrayim about the case of Abū ʿAlī b. Azhar, a formerly wealthy man ruined by "the famous disaster" (al-kā'ina al-mashhūra), who died leaving orphaned children with no inheritance. Shelomo asks Efrayim to contact the deceased's well-off siblings in Fustat and persuade them to provide a dowry for the orphaned girl, since whose betrothed father-in-law has refused to take her without means. Shelomo also appears in the correspondence of Yoshiyyahu b. Hārūn, apparently a grandson of Yoshiyyahu Gaon and a professional copyist, who refers to Shelomo among the notables of Palestine and Egypt. A legal document T-S 13J10.5 (PGPID 935) records a transaction in which Shelomo b. Ṣemaḥ sold an enslaved Maghribī woman to Yūsuf b. ʿAlī for fourteen Egyptian dinars.