Yannai

Yannai was a paytan (liturgical poet) of the Byzantine empire, who may have lived in Eretz Yisrael. He is considered one of the three greatest early paytanim, along with Yose ben Yose and Eleazar Hakalir. He was the first to use rhyme and introduced the convention of alluding to his name in acrostics. He was evidently a very prolific poet, though much of his work has been lost. A manuscript of his poems was discovered in the Cairo geniza and published in 1938.