R. Eliyahu Mani
1818 CE–1899 CE · AH · Hebron
R. Eliyahu Mani (1818-1899) was the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Hebron for over four decades and a senior disciple of R. Abdallah Somekh of Baghdad. Born in Baghdad, he was sent on Baba Sali-era shadar missions to North Africa before making aliyah and settling in Hebron in 1856.
He rebuilt the Hebron Sephardic community after the demographic crisis of the mid-19th century and presided over its growth through the late-Ottoman period. His Karnot Tzaddik responsa, Zichronot Eliyahu glosses on the Shulchan Aruch, and his Chacham Lev derashot are foundational Mizrachi-Eretz-Yisrael sources.
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BaghdadIraq
What they did here
Born in Baghdad; studied under R. Abdallah Somekh. Sent on multiple shadar (emissary) missions to the Maghrebi diaspora before his aliyah.
Baghdad in this era
Baghdad in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries lay under Ottoman dominion, a sprawling metropolis straddling the Tigris where merchants, soldiers, and scholars moved through bazaars dense with spice-smoke and conversation. The Jewish community, numbering in the thousands by the eighteenth century, occupied distinct quarters and maintained their own courts, schools, and charitable institutions under Ottoman millet governance—a framework that granted them autonomy in religious and communal affairs while subjecting them to special taxes and restrictions. Torah study flourished in the city's yeshivas, where Babylonian Talmudic traditions were cherished as local inheritance; the intellectual atmosphere blended rigorous halakhic reasoning with growing interest in Kabbalistic interpretation. The Ben Ish Chai, arriving in the late nineteenth century, found a community engaged in both traditional learning and commercial life, their presence woven into Baghdad's economic fabric as brokers, physicians, and textile merchants. The Tigris itself remained the artery of the city, its waterfront lined with warehouses and boats—a geographical fact that had anchored Jewish settlement there for over a millennium.
About Baghdad
Major Mizrahi center; home of Yosef Hayyim (Ben Ish Chai).
Works
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