ר׳ דוד בן חסין

ר׳ דוד בן אהרן בן חסין (1727–1792) was the outstanding Hebrew liturgical poet of eighteenth-century Morocco and a Torah scholar of Meknes. Educated especially under ר׳ מרדכי בירדוגו, he married into his teacher's family and lived much of his life with limited means. He composed hundreds of piyyutim, elegies, occasional poems and didactic verse, layering biblical diction, rabbinic allusion and North African poetic convention. The poems are also historical testimony: they respond to drought, epidemic, communal violence, admired scholars, bereavement and hopes for redemption. He travelled among Moroccan communities and to Gibraltar, allowing his compositions to circulate through performance and manuscripts. תהלה לדוד, his principal collection, appeared posthumously in Amsterdam in 1807 with an introduction by ר׳ רפאל בירדוגו; later editions spread it across North Africa and eastern Sephardi communities. His מקומן של זבחים versifies the Temple sacrificial order. He died in Meknes in 1792, but poems such as אערוך מהלל ניבי remain living components of Moroccan Jewish worship and song.