Shemuʾel b. Yosef Somekh ha-Kohen

Description / Bio

Son of the prolific sixteenth-century court scribe Yosef b. Meʾīr Somekh ha-Kohen. Based on documents from the Cairo Community Archive, Shemuʾel b. Yosef also served within the Rabbanite community of Cairo as a scribe in the early seventeenth century. Although no relevant geniza documents have emerged thus far, his scribal production is attested in: Israel Ben-Ze'ev, "The Hebrew Documents from the Cairo Community Archives," Sefunot 9 (1964), 273. Furthermore, Shemuʾel's son Shelomo appears as a legal scribe in geniza documents from the 1650s and 1680s– highlighting the likelihood that this occupation was passed down through generations of the Somekh ha-Kohen family during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.