Shemariah ben Elhanan was head of the yeshivah of Cairo, Egypt, about the end of the 10th century. Abraham ibn Daud relates that Ibn Rumais (or Ibn Demahin), an Arab admiral, had captured four scholars who were voyaging from Bari to Sebaste to collect money for the maintenance of the great school in Babylonia ("haknasat kallah"), and that one of the four was called Shemariah b. Elhanan. Shemariah was sold by his captor at Alexandria, where he was afterward ransomed by rich Jews.