Rav Nissim Gaon רב ניסים גאון

Rav Nissim was the son of that same Rabbi Jacob ben Nissim ibn Shahin whose query from Kairouan prompted Rav Sherira Gaon to set out the history of the Talmud.

He himself headed the Kairouan academy and wrote commentaries on the Talmud; his Mafteach Manulei ha-Talmud — "the key to the locks of the Talmud" — points to where parallel passages are found, doing the work that a reference apparatus does today.

But he is better known for something else. Chibbur Yafeh me-ha-Yeshuah — "an elegant composition concerning relief" — is a collection of stories about people who fell into trouble and came out of it. It was written in Arabic and, by the author's own account, at the request of his father-in-law, who had lost a son: so that a person in grief would have something to read.

It is one of the first books in Jewish literature written with an explicitly stated therapeutic purpose. Its stories are drawn from the Talmud, the midrashim and oral circulation, and many survive only here.