David Ben Hodaya Of Mosul

Prince of the Davidic house; lived at Mosul (New Nineveh) about 1150-1220. His genealogy, contained in an excommunication issued by him, reads as follows:

"David, son of Hodaya, son of Azariah, son of Solomon, son of Messias (or Moses), son of Judah, son of Hezekiah, son of Judah, son of Gamaliel the latter, son of Judah, son of Gamaliel the latter, of Tiberias, son of Judah the Saint, etc., son of Shefatiah, son of King David."

The list of names is evidently incomplete and incorrect. After the death of the childless exilarch Daniel ben Ḥasdai (or Solomon; see Grätz, vi. note 10), his two nephews, David b. Hodaya and Samuel; were candidates for the office. The election was still undecided when the traveler R. Pethahiah was at Mosul (about 1175). David was a powerful protector of Samuel ben Ali at Bagdad, the chief opponent of Maimonides in the East.

Samuel had made many enemies by his attacks on Maimonides, and against these the above-mentioned excommunication, dated about 1191, was directed. Al-Ḥarizi, who visited Mosul in 1217, mentions David as the exilarch (ch. 46), and praises him and his nephew Hodaya as the most meritorious in that region. See David.

Bibliography:

  * Grätz, Gesch. vi. 459;
  * Orient, Lit.1845, pp. 739-742;
  * Lazarus, in Brüll's Jahrb. x. 47.



G.A. K.