person · P0086
Yaakov ben Nissim ibn Shahin רב יעקב בן נסים אבן שאהין
Head of the Kairouan study circle, father and teacher of Rabbeinu Nissim — and the addressee of the Iggeret of Rav Sherira Gaon. It was his question ("how was the Mishnah written?") that made the chain of transmission write its own history, and the responsa traffic between his circle and the courts of Sherira and Hai is the documented textual conduit by which Bavel's Torah reached the West. His personal reception edge here is accordingly a writings edge — the atlas's clearest case of transmission by correspondence rather than by sitting before a teacher.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- רב יעקב בן נסים אבן שאהין
- Also known as
- Jacob ben Nissim
- Era
- geonim
- Transmitted the mesorah to
- Rabbeinu Nissim ben Yaakov
- Children
- Rabbeinu Nissim ben Yaakov
II. When
- Traditional
- c. 4700–4766 AM
- Academic
- c. 940–1006/7 CE
- Lifespan (traditional)
- ≈66 years
- Precision
- approximate
III. Where
- Places
- Kairouan
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Iggeret's superscription records that "the rabbis of Kairouan asked the gate of the academy, the court of our master Sherira... and these questions came to the court of our master Hai"; the standard superscription (Lewin's edition) names the questioner as Mar Rav Yaakov son of Mar Rav Nissim of Kairouan, at whose request Sherira composed the epistle in 987.
The Sefaria recension at 2:1 addresses the Kairouan scholars collectively; Yaakov ben Nissim is named in the standard superscription and identified by all the secondary literature.
|
tradition | ★★★★★ | |
| His circle's reception from the Babylonian academies was through writings — the Iggeret itself and the sustained responsa correspondence with Sherira and Hai, whose answers to Kairouan form a large share of the surviving geonic responsa. This is drawn as a received-from-writings edge, not personal study: there is no evidence he ever sat before the geonim. | tradition external | ★★★★☆ | |
| He was father and teacher of Rabbeinu Nissim, and headed a Kairouan academy in close relation with the Babylonian academies; a younger contemporary of Saadia, he also wrote an Arabic commentary on Sefer Yetzirah and a treatise on Indian calculation. | tradition external | ★★★★☆ | |
| His own personal teachers are nowhere named; no upstream personal edge is drawn. The Kairouan chain's documented links upstream are textual — letters to and from Pumbedita. | reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ |