Ḥoter ben Solomon, also known as Manṣūr ibn Sulaymān, lived in Dhamar, Yemen, in the first half of the fifteenth century under the Rasuli dynasty. The dates we have for him are 1423, when he wrote his Seventy Questions and Answers, and 1434/35, the time of the great plague that beset Yemen.

The Yemenite Jewish culture in which Ḥoter wrote was very productive. Its foremost exemplars included Abraham ben Solomon (1422), Zechariah ben Solomon ha-Rofe’ (1427), Saʿid ben David (1446), and Sar Shalom ben David (1451). The culture was steeped in the works of Maimonides. However, drawing on the Rasā’…