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THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

After an interval of a few years, a nephew of the deposed Ukba, David b. Zakkai (920-940), was made €xilarch, and Cohen Zedek II. was forced to recognize him. Foiled as this ambitious Pumbcditan

thus was in regard to the exilarchate, he was in addition compelled to witness the rise and development •of the Academy of Sura, also strongly opposed by him, but which under Saadia reached a point of unprecedented splendor. Saadia, who had been called to Sura from Egypt because there was no scholar of sufficient Talmudic authority there, had already made himself famous by his translation of the Bible into Arabic, and by his commentary upon it. His activity as gaon of Sura (928-942) was even more meritorious than this accomplishment. His battles with the Karaites form but one side of the general polemic activity which ruled at this time in Irak among the professors of the various religions. There was a Parsee controversy ("shikand Saadia. gumanik Vijar") against Jews and Christians in the ninth century (Darmesteter, "Rev. Et. Juives," xviii. 4). Sabaryeshu, -a Jacobite presbyter of Mosul in the tenth century, waged a discussion with a Jewish sage (Assemani, I.e. iii. 1, 541; compare Steinschneider, "Polemischc Literatur," p. 85); and Mohammedan writers like Al-Kindi were continuous in their attacks, from the ninth century on, against Jews and Christians alike (Steinschneider, I.e. p. 112). Two califs, Al-Muktadir and Kahir, interfered in the disputes between the exilarchate and the gaonate, with the result that David had "both institutions suffered in influence. successfully maintained himself against his brother Joshua, whom Saadia had declared exilarch, and had thereafter made friends with the gaon, who

had

Bagdad. He but he ruled only

in the interval been banished to

a son, Judah, to succeed him seven months. Saadia then took affectionate charge of Judah's infant son, until the latter was slain The exilarchate had to be susin a Moslem riot. pended (about 940) until quieter times permitted its There are some faint traces that a artificial revival. certain Hezekiah, a grandson of David's son Judah, was exilarch for a time; but, according to other aua post thorities, he was only gaon of Pumbedita which, with his violent death in 1040, also passed away after an existence of 800 years. left



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The Academy of Pumbedita flourished for a century longer. Aaron ibn Sargado, a wealthy merchant of Bagdad and an opponent of Saadia, acted as gaon of Pumbedita (943-960) and very effectively. Of less importance was Nehemiah, son of Cohen Zedek but in Sherira (968-1000) and his son Hai •or Haia, the Jews of Babylonia possessed two incumbents of the gaonate who shed unrivaled brilliancy upon their office. Yet both these respected dignitaries found themselves the victims of calumnious

Babylonia

with his murder the gaonate of Pumbedita came to an end. The gaonate of Sura was extinguished less suddenly. About 970 a certain R. Jacob b. Mordecai is said to have written to the Jewish communities on the Rhine on the matter of a false Messiah (Mannheimer, "Die Juden in

Worms,"

p.

27);

this

is,

however, considered to be a fabrication. The last gaon of Sura was Samuel b. Hophni, the father-inlaw of Hai; he was distinguished "for his literary When he died in 1034, the gaonate of activities. Sura retrograded more and more, until at last it expired quietly and unnoticed. A special intervention of Providence, according to Ibn Daud, was arranged in order that Babylonian learning should be transplanted to Europe. Four scholars, sent to the West to gather funds for the academies, were captured on the Mediterranean by an admiral of the calif of Cordova; and after many experiences these four became the founders of rabbinical academies in Alexandria, Kairwan, Cordova, and perhaps Narbonne. Babylonia thus lost its central importance for Judaism: it was, however, replaced by the rising communities of Spain, whither the two sons of the unfortunate Hezekiah above mentioned had also migrated. This forms an appropriate point at which to consider the general influence of Babylonia upon European Judaism. Luzzatto ("Hebraische Briefe," p. 865) thus, in substance, describes

it:

The West

re-

ceived both the written and the oral Law from Babylonia. Punctuation and accentuation were begun in Babylonia so also the piyyut, Even philosophy Babylonian, rime, and meter. Influence had its origin here for the frequently mentioned but little-known David haon Judaism. Babli or Al-Mukammez, who lived before Saadia, is the oldest known Jewish philosopher. The greatest if not also the earliest payyetan, Eleazar Kalir, of the eighth century, was apparently a Babylonian. It is true indeed, adds Luzzatto, that heresy is also a Babylonian product; for, in addition to the Karaites, Hiwi al-Balki, Saain a broader sense a dia's opponent, was a Persian Babylonian. [The Talmudic usage survived for a long time of calling all Western Jews (" ma'arbaye ") "Palestinians" and all Eastern Jews ("madinhaye ") " Babylonians. "] One peculiarity of the Babylonians, however, made no headwaj' among the Jews of other lands this was the system of supralineal punctuation (see Pinsker, " Einleitung in das Babylonisch-Hebraische Punctuationssystem "), called the Babylonian or Assyrian, and said to have been invented by the Karaite, R. Aha of Irak (see Margoliouth, in " Proc.



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representations made to the calif AlKadir, probably through the instrumentality of scholars who felt them-

To BabySoc. Bibl. Archaeology," 1893, p. 190). lonian literary activity, in addition to the Babylonian Talmud, must be ascribed possibly the Targum Onkelos, together with some Midrashic works (" Rabbot"), " Halakot Gedolot," and the well-known works bearing the names of the geonim Aha of Shabha,

The two geonim were selves slighted. for a time imprisoned, but ultimately were set at liberty, and the now aged Sherira resigned his office in favor of Hai, who discharged the duties of the

Ami-am, Saadia, Sherira, Hai, Hophni, and others. Babylonian learning, always great from Rab's time, expressed itself in independent works only toward the close of the period, and then disappeared

Sherira and Hai.

gaonate until 1038.

Upon his death

tioned Hezekiah ruled for

the above-men-

two years

longer,

and

altogether.

Babylonia, however,

still

continued to be regarded