ר׳ דוד בן יוסף אבודרהם

ר׳ דוד בן יוסף אבודרהם was a fourteenth-century Sephardi liturgist whose surviving biography is much less certain than the influence of his book. He lived in Seville and completed his great commentary on blessings and prayers there in 1340. The work explains the order, wording, sources, laws, customs, calendar, and meanings of Jewish worship, bringing together Talmudic and geonic material, halakhic authorities, grammar, astronomy, and local Sephardi practice. Older accounts call him a student of ר׳ יעקב בן אשר; the evidence securely shows familiarity and personal association with that scholarly circle, but a formal teacher-student relationship is disputed. Commonly called simply ספר אבודרהם, the commentary became an enduring guide to the siddur and synagogue year, especially in Sephardi communities, and was repeatedly printed from the fifteenth century onward. Because no reliable evidence fixes his birth or death, the numeric lifespan used by the map is explicitly approximate; 1340 is the firm chronological anchor. No authenticated contemporary portrait is known.