Baladi-rite prayer

The Baladi-rite Prayer is the oldest known prayer-rite used by Yemenite Jews, transcribed in a prayer book known as a tiklāl (Judeo-Yemeni Arabic: תכלאל, plural תכאלל tikālil) in Yemenite Jewish parlance. "Baladi", as a term applied to the prayer-rite, was not used until prayer books arrived in Yemen in the Sephardic-rite.^[1]

The Baladi version that is used today is not the original Yemenite version that had been in use by all of Yemen's Jewry until the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th,^[2][1] but has now evolved with various additions under the influence of Sephardi siddurs and the rulings passed down in the Shulchan Aruch.^[1] In the middle of the 18th century, Yiḥyah Salaḥ tried unsuccessfully to create a unified Baladi-rite prayer book, since he devised a fusion between the ancient Yemenite form and Sephardic prayer forms that had already integrated into Yemenite Jewish prayers a hundred years or so years before that.^[1]

The Baladi-rite prayer book contains the prayers used for the entire year as well as the format prescribed for the various blessings (benedictions) recited.^[3] Older Baladi-rite prayer books were traditionally compiled in the Babylonian supralinear punctuation,^[4] although today, all have transformed and strictly make use of the Tiberian vocalization. The text, however, follows the traditional Yemenite punctuation of Hebrew words.