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Shalom ben Yosef al-Shabazi

Shalom ben Yosef al-Shabazi

Also known as The Mori Shalem

1619 CE–1720 CE · Acharonim · Najd al-Walid

R. Shalom ben Yosef al-Shabazi (1619-c.1720) is the paramount Yemenite religious poet — the 'Yemeni Yehuda HaLevi'. Over 850 of his piyutim and shirot, composed in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judeo-Arabic, form the core repertoire of the Yemenite Diwan that is sung at every wedding, Shabbat, and life-cycle event in Yemenite-Jewish life to this day.

He survived the catastrophic 1679-80 Mawza exile (Galut Mawza), during which Yemen's Jews were expelled into the disease-ridden Tihama coastal lowlands; his contemporary lamentations document the horror in real time. His grave in Ta'izz remains a pilgrimage site, and his hymn 'Im Nin'alu Daltei Nedivim' became a global hit when Ofra Haza recorded it in 1988.

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Stop 1 of 31619Born

Najd al-WalidYemen (Ta'izz)

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About Najd al-Walid

Najd al-Walid, a village in the Ta'izz region of Yemen, was the birthplace, around 1619, of Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, the foremost poet of Yemenite Jewry, whose Diwan of some 550 religious poems became central to Yemenite Jewish liturgical and home tradition.

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