Zechariah Dhahiri
Zechariah (Yaḥya) al-Ḍāhirī (, , b. "circa" 1531 – d. 1608), often spelled Zechariah al-Dhahiri () (16th century Yemen), was the son of Saʻīd (Saʻadia) al-Ḍāhirī, from Kawkaban, in the District of al-Mahwit, Yemen, a place north-west of Sana’a. He is recognized as one of the most gifted Yemenite Jewish poets and rabbinic scholars who left Yemen in search of a better livelihood, travelling to Calicut and Cochin in India, Hormuz in Persia, Basra and Irbīl in Babylonia, Bursa and Istanbul in Anatolia, Rome in Italy, Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, Safed and Tiberias, as well as Jerusalem and Hebron in the Land of Israel (then part of Ottoman Syria), Sidon in Ottoman Lebanon and Egypt, and finally unto Abyssinia where he returned to Yemen by crossing the Erythraean Sea and alighting at a port city near Mocha, Yemen. He wrote extensively about his travels and experiences in these places, which he penned in a Hebrew rhymed prose narrative, and eventually publishing them in a book which he called Sefer Ha-Mūsar ("The Book of Moral Instruction"), in circa 1580.
Seder Olam Zutta
With the deaths of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—more exactly, in the 52nd year of the Persian domination, or year 3442 of the creation—prophecy ceased and the period of the wise men ("ḥakamim") began. From Hananiah (Zerubbabel's grandson) onward every exilarch is indicated as having been guided by wise men. The names of the kings that reigned over Judea from Alexander the Great to Roman Palaestina during the destruction of the Second Temple are given. Like the "Seder 'Olam Rabbah", this chronicle gives the reigns of the Maccabees and the Herods as covering 103 years each. The Herodian dynasty consisted, according to the "Seder 'Olam Zuṭa", of three kings only—Herod, Agrippa, and Monobaz; at the end of Monobaz's reign and during the time of the 11th exilarch, Shechaniah, the son of Shemaiah, the Romans destroyed the Temple. Further, from Nahum, the 17th exilarch, the names are given of the wise men, probably the chiefs of the academy, who assisted the exilarchs. With Rab Huna, 29th exilarch, the direct male line of descent from David terminated. The exilarchs following are stated to have been descendants of Rab Huna through his daughter, the wife of R. Hananiah, the head of the yeshibah, whose marriage is related at length.