Bernard Bensaïd is a genealogist whose research constitutes one of the most complete sources on the Encaoua lineage.
His tree, hosted on Geneanet, currently lists 28,666 individuals (updated: October 2024), spanning several centuries of family history. His methodology relies on Algerian civil registry records accessible through the Archives nationales d'outre-mer (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence, supplemented by rabbinic sources (marriage registers, circumcision certificates), oral testimonies, and cross-referencing with other online genealogical trees. This painstaking work, carried out over several decades, is probably the largest genealogical undertaking dedicated to a family of North African Sephardic Judaism.
Bernard Bensaïd's methodology combines three types of sources. Primary civil registry sources: the French colonial registers of Algeria, fully digitized by the ANOM, cover the period 1830–1962 and provide birth, marriage, and death records for the entire Jewish population of Algeria. Rabbinic sources: the registers of the rabbinic courts (ketubot, gittin), synagogue donor lists, and funerary inscriptions fill the gaps left by civil sources, particularly for the period before 1830. Oral sources: dozens of interviews with family members across the world have made it possible to verify and enrich the documentary data. This three-dimensional approach guarantees an exceptional reliability of the data.