Peraḥyā b. Nissīm Ben Yijū
Description / Bio
Son of Nissīm b. Peraḥyā Ben Yijū and of a daughter of Shemuʾel Ibn al-Amshāṭī. He married his maternal cousin, the daughter of his mother's brother Ḥananʾel. His wife's sister married Avraham Maimonides. "'R. Peraḥyā, the distinguished, wise and discerning scholar' (b. Nissīm [or Joseph]) studied in Fustat together with his paternal cousin Joseph 'the scholar' b. Moses in the school of Maimonides' in-law, Ḥananel b. Samuel. [...] Peraḥyā b. Nissīm also wrote a commentary to Alfasi's legal code on Tractate Shabbat. The Ben Yijūs' descendants remained loyal to the Maimonidean family for years, and it seems probable that Peraḥyā b. Nissīm b. Peraḥyā Yijū is the same 'Peraḥyā b. Nissīm,' whose signature appears on a writ of excommunication published in Damascus by the nāsī Yishay b. Hezekiah in 1286, directed against critics of the sage of Fustat's The Guide of the Perplexed." (Goitein & Friedman, India Book, pg. 87-88)
Select bibliography
- S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India traders of the middle ages : documents from the Cairo Geniza : India book (Brill, 2008), vol. 1.