Asenath Barzani (Tanna'it)

Asenath Barzani (c. 1590-1670) was the only known woman in pre-modern Jewish history to head a yeshiva. Daughter of R. Shmuel Barzani — the leading Kabbalist of Kurdish Jewry, head of the Mosul yeshiva — she was educated in Torah, Talmud, and Kabbalah from earliest childhood (her father's marriage contract reportedly stipulated she would not be required to do housework so she could study). She married her father's leading student R. Yaakov Mizrachi.

When her husband died young, she assumed the leadership of the Mosul yeshiva and held it for decades, training rabbis throughout Kurdistan. Her surviving Hebrew letters — preserved in the Cairo Geniza and Mosul community archives — show her teaching halacha, deciding questions of marriage law, and supporting the yeshiva financially through poverty and persecution. Kurdish Jewish tradition called her 'Tanna'it' (the female Tanna). She was reputed to perform miracles; her tomb in Amadiya (later Mosul) became a pilgrimage site.