A number of Jewish families in the Iberian peninsula and within Mesopotamia continued to preserve the tradition of descent from Exilarchs in the Late Middle Ages, including the families of Abravanel, ibn Yahya and Ben-David. Several Ashkenazi scholars also claimed descent from King David. On his father's side, Rashi has been claimed to be a 33rd-generation descendant of Johanan HaSandlar, who was a fourth-generation descendant of Gamaliel, who was reputedly descended from the Davidic line. Similarly Maimonides claimed 37 generations between him and Simeon ben Judah ha-Nasi, who was also a fourth-generation descendant of Gamaliel. Meir Perels traced the ancestry of Judah Loew ben Bezalel to the Hai Gaon through Judah Loew's alleged great-great-grandfather Judah Leib the Elder and therefore also from the Davidic dynasty; however, this claim is widely disputed, by many scholars such as Otto Muneles. The patriarch of the Meisels family, Yitskhak Eizik Meisels, was an alleged 10th generation descendant of the Exilarch, Mar Ukba. Rabbi Yosef Dayan's family paternally descends from Hasan ben Zakkai, the younger brother of the Exilarch David ben Zakkai (d. 940). One of Hasan's descendants Solomon ben Azariah HaNasi settled in Aleppo were the family became Dayan's (judges) of the city and thus adopted the surname Dayan.