Rabbi Hayyim Habshush, alternate spelling, Hibshush (Hebrew: חיים בן יחיא חבשוש also Hayyim ibn Yahya Habshush) (ca. 1833–1899) was a coppersmith by trade, and a noted nineteenth-century historiographer of Yemenite Jewry. He also served as a guide for the Jewish-French Orientalist and traveler Joseph Halévy. After his journey with Halévy in 1870, he was employed by Eduard Glaser and other later travellers to copy inscriptions and to collect old books. In 1893, some twenty three years after Halévy's jaunt across Yemen in search of Sabaean inscriptions, Habshush began to write an account of their journey, first in Hebrew, and then, at the request of Eduard Glaser, in his native language, the Judæo-Arabic dialect of Yemen. His initial account was scattered in three countries (Israel, Austria and Yemen), copies of which were later pieced together by Habshush's editor, S.D. Goitein. Habshush's most important contribution to science is that he helped scholars Joseph Halévy and Eduard Glaser decipher the Sabaean inscriptions which they had come to copy in Yemen, having made transliterations of the texts in the Hebrew alphabet for easier comprehension.
Born |
1833 Yemen
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Died |
1899 (aged 65)
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Zodiac | |
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