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.
Gedaliah, son of Pashhur
Gedaliah, son of Pashhur, is a man described in the Book of Jeremiah of the Hebrew Bible, Judaism's Tanakh, and Christianity's Old Testament. He is described as one of the political opponents of Jeremiah, one of those who appealed to King Zedekiah to have Jeremiah executed because of his prophecies that Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed by the Babylonians due to the wickedness of the Jews:
In August 2008, the Israeli archeologist Eilat Mazar announced the discovery of a bulla, a lump of clay bearing a seal impression, inscribed with the name Gedaliah ben Pashur, in the excavations of the Ir David Foundation in the City of David, just south of Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Mazar noted that the just-discovered bulla was found just yards from the spot where, three years ago, another bulla was found with a name from the above verse, viz. Yehukal ben Shelemyahu (Jucal the son of Shelemiah). Both men served as ministers to King Zedekiah, the last ruler of the Kingdom of Judah before Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.