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…

Please login or register for free access to Posen Library
Register
Already have an account?
Engage with this Source

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.

You may also like

Fuente clara (Clear Fountain)

The polemical Judeo-Spanish work (written in Hebrew characters) Fuente clara (Clear Fountain; drawing on Psalm 84) was published in Salonika. Its anonymous author, a philosopher and physician…
View Source

The Tongue Set Free

Ruschuk, on the lower Danube, where I came into the world, was a marvelous city for a child, and if I say that Ruschuk is in Bulgaria, then I am giving an inadequate picture of it. For…
View Source