Bezalel Ashkenazi - Shittah Mekubezet

To posterity Ashkenazi is known principally as the author of the Shittah Mekubezet, (trans. Gathered Interpretation). This work, as its title indicates, is a collection of glosses on the greater part of the Talmud, after the fashion of the Tosafot; and in it Ashkenazi combined much original and foreign material. The great value of the Shittah lies principally in the fact that Ashkenazi gives therein numerous excerpts from Talmudic commentaries which have not otherwise been preserved.

The Shittah contains expositions of the Talmud taken from the works of the Spaniards Nahmanides, ben Adret, and Yom-Tov of Seville, and from those of the Frenchmen Abraham ben David, Baruch ben Samuel, Isaac of Chinon, etc. The study of the Shittah is particularly valuable for understanding the Tosafists, because the work contains some of the older and inedited Tosafot; besides, glosses of R. Asher ben Jehiel and of the disciples of R. Perez are partly contained in it. Ashkenazi designed the Shittah to cover the whole Talmud; but only the following tracts were interpreted: Bezah, Baba Kamma, Baba Batra, Baba Metzia, Ketubot, Nedarim, Nazir, Sotah, and the order of Kodashim (excepting Hullin) — the last-mentioned in the Romm edition of the Talmud. Ashkenazi is also the author of a collection of responsa, which appeared after his death (Venice, 1595). His Methodology of the Talmud, and his marginal notes to the Yerushalmi, which were still extant at the time of Azulai, are preserved in manuscript at Jerusalem.