Rabbi Abdallah (Ovadia) Somekh was born in Baghdad in 1813, the son of Rabbi Avraham Yosef Yechezkel, a wealthy scholar descended from Rabbeinu Nissim, author of the great Viduy. He studied under Rabbi Yaakov bar Yosef HaRofe, one of Iraq's great dayanim, who called him "my outstanding and discerning disciple".

After his marriage he first worked as a merchant. But seeing Torah study decline among the young men of Baghdad, he gave up commerce to devote himself to their education, gathering ten young scholars whom he taught without pay. The philanthropist Yechezkel Reuven then built a beit midrash in 1840, the Midrash Abu Menashe, which became the Beit Zilkha yeshiva. Rabbi Abdallah headed it until his death; for decades it trained the sages of Iraqi Jewry and it remained open until 1951.

He was the teacher of the Ben Ish Chai and of Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer, author of Kaf HaChaim. Immensely learned, uncompromising on principle and proverbially humble, he was one of the last links in the great chain of the sages of Babylon. His responsa, answering questions from Iraq, India and Persia, deal especially with shechita; collected in Zivchei Tzedek, they became the handbook of Baghdadi Jews as far as India and the Far East.

He passed away on 18 Elul 5649 (1889).