ʿAbd Allāh Somekh was a halakhist, rabbinic educator, and spiritual leader of Iraqi Jews both in his homeland and throughout the Baghdadi mercantile diaspora. The son of Abraham and Khātūn Somekh, he was born in Baghdad in 1813 and died there in 1889. His family traced its lineage back to Nissim Gaon, head of the Nehardea academy in the tenth century.

Somekh studied under Jacob ben Joseph ha-Rofeh, and in his twenties divided his time between business and study. Subsequently he decided to devote himself to the renaissance of rabbinic scholarship and leadership in Iraq. With major fu…