Issachar ben Mordecai Ben Sūsān ha-Maʿaravi (ca. 1514–after 1573) was the rabbi of a community of Maghrebi Jews in Safed during the sixteenth century, an expert on the calculation of the Hebrew calendar, a chronicler of religious customs of the Jewish communities of the East, and a translator of the Bible into Judeo-Arabic. The dates of his birth and death are a matter of academic disagreement. He was born around the year 1514 in Morocco to Mordecai Ben Sūsān, whom he described as a remarkable scholar of Torah. He claimed to be descended from the tribe of Benjamin, citi…