Lublin became a centre of Talmudic studies in the 16th century, one that was famous in the whole Ashkenazi world. Historian Salo Witmayer Baron even claims in his monumental A Social and Religious History of the Jews that Lublin was the most intellectually influential Jewish community in the world at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. It could boast a prominent yeshiva, established by Shalom Shachna (c. 1495-1559), the son of Josko Shachnovitz, a tariff leaseholder and supplier of goods to the royal court, who had moved from Lviv to Lublin around 1500. Shalom Shachna, having completed rabbinical studies in Poznań, Krakow and northern Italy, returned to Lublin around 1530 and founded a yeshiva, or a Talmudic academy. One of his students and later a son-in-law was Moshe Isserles (1525-1572), known as the Ramah (or Remuh in Yiddish). Other heads of the yeshiva included such outstanding rabbis as Shlomo ben Yechiel Luria (1510-1573), known as the Maharshal, or Meir ben Gedalia (d. 1616), known as the Maharam. It was after Maharshal (acronym for Moreinu ha-Rav Shlomo Luria, or Our Teacher Rabbi Shlomo Luria) that the biggest Lublin synagogue was named. Located at 5 Jateczna Street, the synagogue was founded at the foot of the castle in 1567. The brick monumental building was most probably the first synagogue with a central bimah, so typical of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. Maharshal himself worked out the instructions for its construction, having analysed the Talmud and perhaps having drawn inspiration from the architecture of the nearby Gothic castle chapel with a central pillar.The Lublin circle of educated Talmud scholars and their disciples stimulated demand for Hebrew books. Thus a Hebrew printing house was set up in the town by Chaim ben Yitzchak Shachor in 1547 and developed by the Jaffe family. It was the second Jewish printing house in Poland, competitive with the one in Krakow. It published the whole of the Babylonian Talmud (1559-1577), the first edition of Tsene Urene (c. 1590), an exceedingly popular religious book in Yiddish, and the Zohar, the foundational book of Kabbalah (1623, for a third time in Europe). One of the first Lublin printers, Eliezer ben Yitzchak, left for Safed in 1576, where he founded the first printing press in the Middle East.The Jewish Town, along with the synagogue and the castle, were destroyed by the Cossack and Muscovite troops besieging Lublin in 1656. Over two thousand Jews were killed at that time. The quarter and the synagogue were gradually rebuilt, yet Lublin did not regain its previous significance as a centre of rabbinical studies. Another considerable redevelopment of the synagogue took place after a construction disaster in 1854. As Meir Balaban wrote: The synagogue makes a great impression. It is very spacious and has galleries for women on the western and northern sides. The prayer hall is bright, the high windows must have been put in during the recent reconstruction, as windows were made smaller in the old days, even if for security reasons. Big candlesticks would be lit for the prayer leader, as well as a beautiful menorah, placed to the right of the pulpit.In addition to the main synagogue, called the Maharshal Shul, the synagogue compound also comprised the smaller Maharam Shul and the small Shiva Kruim house of prayer (Hebrew “Shiva Kruim” means “the seven called [to read Torah]” in English). A communal beit midrash (a study hall), a Talmud-Torah school and a mikveh (a ritual bath) were also located in the vicinity.