The Ḥabshūsh (Ḥibshūsh) family, based in Ṣan‘ā, produced several prominent merchants and rabbis who made important contributions to Yemenite Jewish literature and religious life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The family name is probably derived from the Arabic noun ḥabash (Abyssinia) and might indicate that the family once had Abyssinian commercial contacts.

Shalom ibn Yaḥyā Ḥabshūsh (1825–1905) was appointed head of the Ṣan‘ā yeshiva after the death of Yaḥyā Badīhī in 1887. As the yeshiva closed permanently during the Turkish siege of…