The life and poetry of Rabbi Mūsā Bujnāḥ (d. 1680) cast a shining light on the spiritual life of the Jews of Tripoli in the seventeenth century. Regarded as Tripolitania’s finest Jewish poet, Mūsā was blind, according to the tradition handed down by Abraham Khalfon, the biographer of the Jews of Libya, and studied Torah in Egypt.

A great many of Mūsā’s poems were intended for inclusion in the liturgy, centered around the Nishmat prayer, to which some North African communities attached piyyut im. This practice is reflected in the collections of ancient Tripolitanian song and po…