Nathan ben Yeḥiel

Nathan ben Yeḥiel of Rome came from a family of leading Roman Jews and supervised the talmudic academy in that city. His teacher was, in all likelihood, his father, Yeḥiel ben Abraham of Rome, the author of several piyyutim (liturgical poems) preserved in Italian manuscripts. As a talmudic authority, Nathan wrote responsa, but he is best known today as the author of the ‘Arukh, an important Hebrew dictionary that draws on Aramaic, Latin, Greek, Persian, and Arabic. This work also offered legal positions and recounted current practices of Italian Jews, although it mostly cited the Babylonian geonim and the talmudic scholars of Qayrawān, in Tunisia, and of Mainz, in the Rhineland. The work was extremely popular and circulated widely.