The Ḥuṣīn family were a line of rabbinical scholars, beginning with Ṣadqa Ḥuṣīn, who were active in Baghdad in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries and in Jerusalem in the second quarter of the twentieth.

Ṣadqa Ḥuṣīn (1699–1773) was born into an impoverished family in Aleppo, but was adopted by the community’s grandee. His intellectual potential was already recognized in his teens. In 1742, when a plague decimated Baghdad’s rabbinic scholars, Ṣadqa was sent from Aleppo in response to a request from Baghdad for someone to serve as chief rabbi. In this capacity he…