The Ben Nāʾīm (Ibn Nāʾīm) family of rabbis and rabbinical jurists (dayyanim) thrived in Algiers and Fez from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

Jacob Ḥayyim ben Isaac Ben Nāʾīm (d. 1803) was a noted rabbi and jurist in the second half of the eighteenth century. In his youth, Jacob studied with Ephraim ben Abraham Monsonego (1710–1780), a rabbi and kabbalist in Fez and Tetouan; he traveled to Palestine around 1760, but was delayed in Mascara, Algeria, and finally returned to Algiers in 1764, where he served as head of the rabbinical court for eighteen years. However, li…