Chushiel

Chushiel ben Elchanan (also Ḥushiel) was president of the bet ha-midrash at Kairouan (alt: Kairwan), Tunisia toward the end of the 10th century. He was born probably in Italy, but his origins and travels are obscure, and his eventual arrival in Kairwan is the subject of a well-known story.

According to the Sefer Ha-Kabbalah of Abraham ibn Daud, Chushiel was one of the four scholars who were captured by Ibn Rumaḥis, an Arab admiral, while voyaging from Bari to Sebaste to collect money "for the dowries of poor brides." Ḥushiel was sold as a slave in North Africa, but he and the other three rabbis were ransomed by Jewish communities in Alexandria, Cordoba, and Kairouan. On being ransomed, Ḥushiel went to Kairouan, an ancient seat of Talmudical scholarship (Harkavy, Teshubot ha-Ge'onim, Nos. 199, 210). There his Talmudical knowledge gained for him the position of president of the bet ha-midrash (A. Neubauer, M. J. C. i. 67 et seq.)—probably after the death of Jacob ben Nissim.

However, an autograph letter from Ḥushiel (discovered in the Cairo Genizah and published by S. Schechter, J. Q. R. xi. 643) addressed to Shemariah ben Elhanan, chief rabbi of Cairo (supposed by Ibn Daud to have been captured with Ḥushiel), tends to show that Ḥushiel merely went to visit his friends in Middle Eastern countries, and was retained by the community of Kairouan. It may therefore be the case that the story presented by ibn Daud is an etiological myth explaining the migration of Jewish centers of learning from Babylonia to Spain and North Africa.

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