Qanun al Nisa, title page

The Ben Ish Hai, as Rabbi Yosef Hayyim is popularly known, was a prolific and wide-ranging Baghdadi author of some sixty works, including halakhic or Jewish legal rulings (responsa), Torah commentaries, piyyut (liturgical songs), and Kabbalah exegeses. This work was written in Judeo-Arabic, the lingua franca of its intended readers: Jewish women. Chapter 58, which was also published separately, contains riddles meant to “reveal and sharpen” women’s minds.