Place · Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia
Sura
A trading town on the Euphrates where Rav founded one of the main rabbinic academies of Babylonia. Not in Pleiades; no coordinates.
No verified coordinates
Statements linked to this place
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The turn shows in the career of Rav Abba, known simply as Rav. According to rabbinic sources he was born in Babylonia, went to study in Palestine like other Babylonian sages, and was reportedly ordained there by Judah ha-Nasi. Around 219 he came back and opened at Sura, a trading town on the banks of the Euphrates, a study house (bet midrash) that would become one of Babylonia's great academies. Later Babylonian sages saw this return as the moment they began to regard themselves as equals of the Land of Israel (Bava Kama 80a).
Community: The Sura academy
Tradition or narrative
The turn shows in the career of Rav Abba, known simply as Rav. According to rabbinic sources he was born in Babylonia, went to study in Palestine like other Babylonian sages, and was reportedly ordained there by Judah ha-Nasi. Around 219 he came back and opened at Sura, a trading town on the banks of the Euphrates, a study house (bet midrash) that would become one of Babylonia's great academies. Later Babylonian sages saw this return as the moment they began to regard themselves as equals of the Land of Israel (Bava Kama 80a).
Tradition or narrative
Rav Ashi, head of the Sura academy in the early fifth century, cultivated good relations with the Persian government. Following later Geonim, he is credited, along with Ravina, with much of the work that led to the Babylonian Talmud, completed by subsequent generations.
After the Talmud there emerged in Babylonia the Geonim (singular: Gaon), heads of the two most important academies, Sura and Pumbedita. They retained their influence after the Muslims defeated the Sasanians, and through them Babylonian rabbinic culture reached Jewish communities throughout the Islamic world.
Community: The Sura academy under the Geonim
Babylonian rabbinic culture centered on the academies of Sura and Pumbedita, which doubled as a high court. As the calendar dispute showed, they contended with the Palestinian academy for the allegiance of communities everywhere, the yeshivah of Tiberias, which moved to Jerusalem in the 10th century.
The Babylonian academies convened the kallot ('gatherings') twice yearly, in late winter and in late summer; scholars traveled from distant places with gifts from their communities and hoped to be granted titles of honor by the Geonim.
Saadya ben Yosef (882 or 892 to 942) was the most prominent figure of Baghdad's Jewish culture. He presided as Gaon over the Sura academy from 928 until his death and was the first outsider to head one of the two Babylonian yeshivot. Born in Egypt, he translated nearly all the Bible into Arabic and contributed to Hebrew philology, drafting the first known Hebrew dictionary, as well as to liturgy and rabbinic law.