Halakha and Talmud commentary
He wrote “in a short and sound way”, in the Chida’s words. His glosses on the Rosh and his objections to the Maharsha were printed within the Talmud in all its editions up to the Vilna Shas, and the Magen Avraham calls him “Gaon”. He opposed deciding the law from the Shulchan Arukh and its commentaries, and supported deciding it from the Arba’ah Turim with the Beit Yosef.
An Ashkenazi rabbi, one of the first of the Acharonim, most likely born in Koidanov in Belarus, who studied under Rabbi Yaakov of Lublin and then under his son and served as a judge in the court of Rabbi Moshe Lima. In the Tach VeTat massacres his two daughters were murdered and most of his writings were lost, and afterwards he served as rabbi in many cities, among them Brisk, Frankfurt and Kraków. He wrote Birkat HaZevach on the order Kodashim, Tiferet Shmuel on the Piskei HaRosh and the responsa Emunat Shmuel, and died in 1676.
The archive doesn’t yet record Rabbi Aharon Shmuel Kaidanover’s teachers, so the road to Sinai can’t be drawn yet.