שואל ומשיב: דוד בן סעד אלצעדי ופולמוס האלגוריה בתימן

This article seeks to establish the identity of the author of the Defense of the Sages of the City of Saʿdah, written against the Sages of the city of Sanaʿa, as part of the intense polemic regarding allegory in Yemen. The author of this article reconsiders an important passage in the ‘Lamp of Wisdom’ by R. Hoter ben Shelomo, which several major scholars have already discussed, in connection to the polemic regarding allegory in Yemen. The main argument is that analysis of this passage reveals that the author of the ‘Defense’ is probably David BenSaʿad Al-Saʿadi, one of the sages of the community of Saʿdah, active in the second half of the fourteenth century (at the latest, in the first half of the fifteenth century). Moreover, itis argued that this David Ben Saʿad was probably the teacher of Rabbi Amram Alkefaʿi (theauthor of the allegorical commentary to ‘Gather, O sages’ by Maimonides), who composed a famous treatise on logic, as Rabbi Amram Alkefaʿi himself attests. The author also argues that this David Ben Saʿad might have been the Yemeni poet known as David Ben Gad.