Shalshelet ha-kabbalah (The Chain of Tradition): On Spirits

Gedaliah Ibn Yaḥya

Mid–16th Century

Now, after God has made known to you all of this by means of the toil of my hands, having gathered and bound them together, may the strength of my hand grow to write to you and to present before you the answer to your question regarding the foreign spirits that enter the bodies of humans, which by the power of adjurations reveal their names and say…

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Creator Bio

Gedaliah Ibn Yaḥya

1526–1587

A versatile Renaissance rabbinic scholar, Gedaliah ben Joseph Ibn Yaḥya was born in Imola, in northern Italy, to a distinguished family of Portuguese Jews. He studied in prominent Italian yeshivas, lived in a number of the peninsula’s cities, and—displaced and dispossessed in 1569 by Pope Pius V’s expulsion of Jews from papal lands—died in Alessandria, in Italy’s Piedmont region. His short treatise “In Praise of Women” belongs to a long-standing literary debate over women’s inherent characteristics. He is best known as the author of Shalshelet ha-kabalah (The Chain of Tradition), which presents a history of the Jews, as well as a general history, and includes an assortment of short scientific tractates. Begun in 1549, Shalshelet ha-kabalah was concluded several decades later, close to Ibn Yaḥya’s death. Most of his other works have been lost.

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