Ḥasan (Hussein) ben Mashi'aḥ

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ḤASAN (Hussein) BEN MASHI'AḤ

ḤASAN (Hussein ) BEN MASHI'AḤ (tenth century), Karaite scholar. According to *Ibn al-Hītī he lived in Baghdad, where he held religious *disputations with the Christian scholar Abu Ali ʿIsā ibn Zarʿa. *Sahl b. Maẓli'aḥ states that Ḥasan had disputations with *Saadiah Gaon (d. 942), which seems chronologically unlikely. Ḥasan also wrote a polemical treatise against Saadiah, passages of which are incorporated in the Eshkol ha-Kofer of Judah *Hadassi and in a manuscript in Leningrad. A remark of *Ibn Ezra in the introduction to his commentary on the Pentateuch suggests that Ḥasan wrote biblical commentaries.

bibliography:

S. Poznański, Karaite Literary Opponents of Saadiah Gaon (1908), 15f.; Mann, Texts, 2 (1935), index.

[Leon Nemoy]

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