Halakha and responsa, Mishnah commentary and heading a yeshiva
Training judges and rabbis through experience: in the Beit Yaakov yeshiva he set new orders of study, with a place for young students and for Torah scholars; the students studied in five “tables” and then apprenticed in ruling and judging alongside ten sages, until they were appointed judges in communities abroad. His responsa in Halakhot Ketanot, too, he wrote, according to the Chida, in a short manner in order to sharpen the students.
Born in Fez, Morocco, in 1620, he moved in his youth to Italy, where he printed books, and in 1658 he went up to Jerusalem and founded the Beit Yaakov study house there. He wrote the responsa Halakhot Ketanot, Etz Chaim on the Mishnah and Petil Tekhelet on the Azharot of Ibn Gabirol. At the head of the rabbis of Jerusalem he took a firm line against Shabbetai Tzvi, and the rabbis of the city under his leadership published a ban against him; he died in Constantinople in 1674.
The archive doesn’t yet record an unbroken road from Rabbi Yaakov Hagiz to the chain of transmission: the trail reaches back to Rabbi Shmuel Aboab and stops there.