Subject: JUICE History 7 - Medieval History under Islam
Date:    Wed, 13 May 1998 01:36:01 +0000
To:      "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>

From:          JUICE Administration <juice@virtual.co.il>
To:            Contemporary Jewish History  <history@virtual.co.il>
Subject:       JUICE History 7
X-To:          history@wzo.org.il

==============================================================
                  World Zionist Organization
                Jewish University in CyberspacE
          juice@wzo.org.il         birnbaum@wzo.org.il 
                     http://www.wzo.org.il 
==============================================================
Course: Medieval Jewish History
Lecture: 7/12
Lecturer: Prof. Howard Adelman

Developments in Jewish Life Under Islam

Unfortunately, there is very little documentation for the history of the
Jews during the first few centuries Islamic rule.  S. D. Goitein calls the
period from 600-800 a "black out."  All that historians are able to do is
establish an approximation of what happened based on the difference between
what life was like before the period began and after it ended.  During this
period in the east, in what Goitein calls a "bourgeois revolution," the Jews
shifted from agriculture to urban commerce and banking, which did not
include, contrary to convention wisdom, peddling and moneylending.  One of
the reasons for the urbanization of the Jews may have been the land tax
imposed upon them and other groups by Islam.   

Information from this period is available in the rabbinic literature of the
period and in many fragments from the Cairo Geniza, a synagogue storehouse
for worn out and discarded books and papers that had accumulated beginning
around the year 750 and continuing until the nineteenth century, when these
documents were removed  and dispersed to several libraries around the world.
The major haul was given to Solomon Schechter to take to Cambridge after two
women, Mrs. A. S. Lewis and Mrs. M. D. Gibson, brought important specimens
of rare documents to his attention. The most important scholar of this
material was S. D. Goitein, author of the multi-volumed Mediterranean World,
whose students have continued his work. In addition to thousands of
fragments of Judeo-Arabic correspondence, legal documents, and court records
of Jews under Islamic rule, there are also many fragments of Jewish
philosophy, Hebrew poetry, rabbinic responsa, Patristic
writings--palimpsests over which Jews wrote in Hebrew--and even some Dead
Sea Scrolls ended up in the Geniza.  Interestingly, just as the initial
curators of the Dead Sea Scrolls tried to block wide scholarly access to
them, so too some of the early keepers of Geniza materials, particularly
Alexander Harkavey, superintendent of the Hebrew collection in St.
Petersburg, had exclusive access to the materials. These materials shed
light on the Jews of the entire Mediterranean basin:  Spain, Morocco,
Tunisia, Sicily, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria.

A.  Jewish Institutions Under the Umayyids and Abassids

Succession among the Muslims was highly contested and internecine warfare
was regular. The Umayyid family of Mecca tried to establish their Caliphate
in Jerusalem in 660 but moved it the next year to Damascus where it and the
Jews under it flourished.  

1. Radhanites

During this period a network of Jewish international merchants traveled
regularly throughout the world, from the Iberian peninsula to China, where
some Persian Jews had arrived as early as the eighth century. Whether one or
several groups, known as Radhanites,  Radhaniya or Rahdaniya in Arabic, the
only descriptions of them, whose name is best identified with a district in
Babylonia, is preserved in the work of two Arabic geographers from the ninth
century, ibn Khordadhbeh and ibn al-Faqih. These merchants, noted for their
linguistic accomplishments in Arabic, Persian, Greek, Frankish, Andalusian,
and Slavonic, took several different routes as they moved not only regularly
around the Mediterranean, but carried goods across what is now the Suez
canal and then headed east by boat to Constantinople, Antioch, and places in
northern Africa and traveled by land and riverboat to Khazaria, Baghdad,
India, and China.  One itinerary mentions a stop in the Golan at al-Jabiya.
They traded in slaves, brocade, furs, swords, musk, aloe, camphor, and
cinnamon.  According to several historians, the Mediterranean Sea was
actually sealed off by Muslims to Christian commerce, prompting the
medievalist Henri Pirenne to call it an "Islamic lagoon."  With Christians
and Muslims at war with each other, Jews were considered neutral, accepted
by both Muslims and by Christians, and had contacts all over the world who
shared a common language, Hebrew, although not mentioned in the accounts of
the Rhadanites, and a common legal system and, therefore, could travel
between the Christian and Muslim worlds very easily. The activities of the
Radhanites ended with the Crusades who both attacked Jews and opened the way
for other merchants. (Stillman, p. 163.) Not tied to the land as were the
vast majority of people at this time, the Jews may have been free in many 
ways.

2.  Exilarchate

In 750 the Abbasids, led by Abu-l-abbas al-Saffah (750-754) and Al-Mansur
(754-775) established a new the Caliphate with its administrative center in
Baghdad, a city founded in 762, which was also near the center of rabbinic
scholarship in Babylonia. The rabbinic academies and the adult learning
programs, kallot, of Sura and Pumbedita as well as the Exilarch soon
relocated to Baghdad itself. Under the Caliphate the institutions of
rabbinic authority, the Gaonate and the Exilarch, which had been developing
for several centuries, flourished and imposed their hegemony over much of
world Jewry. 

The Exilarch's authority grew as he became the leading representative of the
Jews to the Muslims.  According to historians such as Stillman, the prestige
of the Exilarch was enhanced not only by his alleged davidic descent but
also by the legend that the Exilarch Bustanay b. Haninah (618-670)  was
given the captive daughter of the last Sassanian Shah, Chosroes II,  for a
wife by  the Caliph Umar.   According to other accounts, however, marriage
with a gentile captive was a blemish on his descendants and the office. A
description of the elaborate regal ceremonial court of the Exilarch in the
tenth century is found in the Hebrew chronicle Seder Olam.  Some of the key
features of this document, in addition to early traces of the daily worship
service, which apparently included a choir of young boys, include the
appearance of the different constituencies of the Jewish community:  the
Heads of the two academies of Sura and Pumbedita, the leaders of the
congregation, and  the wealthy lay leader in whose house the ceremony took
place.  The actual installation ceremony included aspects of ancient
ceremonies, such as the laying of hands in ordination and sacrifice and the
blowing of the shofar which carried regal overtones, an aspect of the
ceremony that was enhanced by the fact that the Exilarch wore purple,
presenting him as a king with all the trappings of royal power.  As a
response the Christian reading of Genesis 49:10, "The scepter shall not
depart from Judah until Shiloh comes" as well as the provisions of the Pact
of Umar, this attempt, at least by the author of the chronicle, to invest
the Jewish leaders with royalty served as a way for Jewish writers to show
that the scepter had not departed from Judah, suggesting that "Shiloh" had
not yet come. 

When the service was over, the Exilarch established his court in which he
demonstrated his regal and courtly behavior. The account stressed also that
the Exilarch had regular access to the Caliph (Stillman, 171-177). 

3.  Gaonate

The position of the Geonim, the heads of the rabbinic academies of
Babylonia,  as mentioned earlier, went back to around the late 500s.  One
way that the Geonim of Babylonia made their views known throughout the
world, especially after the Islamic conquests, was through responsa or
sheelot uteshuvot, questions and answers.  They were sent questions first
from the near east and then from places as far a way as France and Germany
as Jewish communities emerged in Europe to which they provided written
answers.  These answers provided the first commentary on specific points
raised by the newly codified Talmud. Working with these responsa can be
frustrating for the historian because the editors often omitted specific
details such as to whom it was sent, where, when, and sometimes even the
question that was asked.  The legal and exegetical activity of the Geonim
became the  basis of Sheiltot, the first post-talmudic rabbinic work
attributed to a specific author that issued by  Rabbi Aha of Shabha
(680-752). In 748, when he was passed over by the Exilarch for the position
of Gaon of Pumbedita in favor of one of  his own students, Rabbi Aha left,
with many followers, for Palestine, where they established many synagogues
that followed the Babylonian rites.  This Aramaic codification of Jewish law
and sermonic material, from either Babylonia or Palestine, preserved in many
editions in the Geniza, contains material that antedates and contradicts the
Talmud.  The principle of organization of this code was the attempt to
connect the rabbinic material to verses in the Bible, often establishing
unusual connections. The cycle of codification and interpretation that we
saw with the Bible and Midrash, the Mishnah and the Gemara, thus now
continued where the next level of commentary on previous codifications
itself has now been codified, a process that will continue throughout Jewish
history.

B. Protest and Confrontation among the Jews

1. Messianic and Sectarian Movements

The leaders of these armed uprisings against the Jewish and even the secular
leaders are often called false messiahs because they mixed religious dissent
with political activism, usually claiming Davidic origins to legitimize
their claims to leadership.  These movements, when they failed to produce
the promised results, would often become sects.  After the disastrous
results of the Bar Kokhba uprising against Rome, when Rabbi Akiva identified
Bar Kokhba as the messiah in his own lifetime, subsequent rabbis tried to
postpone the coming of the messiah to dates in the distant future.  Many of
these movements were reacting against the hegemony of the Exhilarch and his
agents, the Babylonian academies, and the authority of the Talmud.  Some
historians have connected these groups to lapsed sectarian practices from
second temple times, a dubious view.  These movements do reflect sectarian
tendencies in Islam. In Islam the Mahdi, initially associated with Jesus,
was described as the Messiah, the one who would appear at the end of time to
fill the earth with justice.  This view, not in the Koran and not accepted
by many schools of Islam, was stimulated by opposition to the Umayyids by
dissident Persian followers of the assassinated Caliph Ali, Shiat Ali,
called the Shiites, who hoped for his return, raja, or the return of one of
several other his successors, imam, who had disappeared and were considered
to be in a state of concealment, gaiba.  The Shiites may have been
influenced by Christian Docetism--the belief that the sufferings and death
of Jesus did not take place in reality and constituted only his temporary
disappearance.  The Shiite messianic movements, however, began only around
724-743, precluding influence on earlier Jewish movements, but not excluding
profound influence on Jewish messianic movements throughout the middle ages.
These Jewish movements, led by charismatics with neither scholarly
credentials nor family lineage nor wealth, also seemed to be imitating the
basic claim to prophecy exercised by Muhdictory and found in the chronicles
and polemics of their adversaries:  Christians, Muslims, and Rabbinic Jews.
Word of these group circulated among the Jews for many centuries but they
themselves left no records.  
        
1.  The messiah of Falujah/Pallughta/Pumbedita/, Iraq, about 645.  Knowledge
of this anonymous Jewish man who declared that he was the messiah comes from
a Christian Syrian chronicle which retained nothing about their doctrines.
At the beginning of the Arab conquest, when Iraq was not yet the center of
the Caliphate, during the unstable reign of the Caliph Uthman, the messiah
of Falujah and about four hundred armed tanners, weavers, and barbers, rose
up, burned three unspecified houses of worship, and killed the local ruler
before they were stopped by a garrison of the Caliph. They, their wives, and
their children were killed.     

2.  Abu Isa the Isfahani, Ovadia, or Muhammed the son of Jesus, of Isphahan,
from about 680 or 740, depending on whether the Caliph mentioned was the
Marwan I or II, both of whom reigned during struggles between the Umayyids
and the Abbasids.  He declared that he was an elevated prophet established
by God and the final one of the five emissaries of the messiah, perhaps also
the messiah as well. His followers confessed belief in Muhammed and Jesus.
According to the twelfth century account by Maimonides, he was of the
davidic line and attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, medieval code
for a lot, and that he and his followers went out armed and killed anybody
who bothered them. According to legends, he drew a line with a myrtle branch
to protect his followers when they fought, he cured a leper, banned divorce
completely, despite the generous provisions of Jewish and Islamic law,
required prayer seven times a day, based on Psalms 119, forbade eating meat
and drinking wine based on the behavior of Rechabites in Jeremiah 35:5, and
used a solar calendar while the rabbis used a combined solar-lunar calendar.
After he attacked the government, the governmental forces launched a war
against him, killing him at Rai. Nevertheless, some of his followers claimed
that he had not been not killed, and was only hiding in a cave.  Reports
about this movement continued for many centuries, some, as mentioned,
reached  Maimonides who reported them in his letter to Yemen, written at the
end of the twelfth century (Stillman, 242).
        
3.  Yudgan, about 720 or 756-785, attracted disciples, the Yudganites, who
called him, Ro'i, usually interpreted as my shepherd, but it also could be
connected with Rai, the place where Abu Isa died since the Yudganites
claimed that Yudgan was a disciple of Abu Isa. Yudgan declared himself to be
a prophet;  the Yudganites, believed he was the messiah. Various sources
attributed to Yudgan practices such as asceticism, excessive prayer, a ban
on meat and liquor, a belief in  transmigration of souls or reincarnation, a
relaxation of Sabbath and holiday observance, and the complete negation of
all the commandments for Jews in the diaspora.  Finally, Yudgan and nineteen
followers were killed in battle.  Yudgan's teachings later reached the
attention of Saadia Gaon who attacked them in his Book of Beliefs and
Opinions, the earliest Jewish philosophical work of the middle ages (Emunot
vedeot 6:7) and Abraham ibn Ezra, the famous Spanish Jewish scholar, who
also attacked them.

4.  Severus or Serenus, 713-721, was a Syrian Christian convert to Judaism.
He claimed to some that he was the messiah and that he came to liberate the
Jews or to return them to their ancient land. To others he claimed that he
was the emissary of the messiah or the son of God. Because accumulated great
wealth from his followers whom he left without anything some chronicles
identify him as a swindler, a charlatan, and a magician. He seems to have
been arrested, confessed to his deceit, had his property confiscated, and
then was freed. Active at the time of the Muslim conquest of Spain, he
attracted followers as far away as Spain and Gaul, chronicles reports that
all the Jews abandoned their property and left Spain to join him in Syria.
One of the Geonim, Natronai I, accused Severus of leading his followers to
sectarianism, abandoning prayer, enjoying impermissible food and drink,
doing work on the second days of holidays, and writing marriage contracts
that were not in accordance with Jewish law.  The Calif, Yazid II ibn adb-al
Malikh (720-724), ordered him to be killed.  His followers then sought
rabbinic permission to return to Judaism and asked the Gaon Natronai
whether they needed ritual immersion again upon their return.  Although some
rabbis wanted to turn them away because they did not follow the proper laws
of divorce and marriage, especially the proper rules of consanguinity, too
closely related by blood.  Natronai ruled that even though they were sinners
who went out to an evil culture, denied the teachings of the rabbinic sages,
desecrated the Jewish holidays and commandments, and contaminated themselves
with unkosher food, it would be better to receive them than to reject them.
Natronai urged that Severus' followers be flogged and fined by the Jewish
court, then after they were afflicted they should stand in the synagogues
and agree that they would never rebel again. Natronai also warned that their
marriages should be investigated and any that were consanguineous should be
annulled and the children declared mamzers, children of a forbidden union,
not allowed to marry in the Jewish community.  Their marriage contracts
should also be examined to make sure that they were proper and if not, they
should be rewritten. Accounts of Severus circulated for many centuries.

These movements show a high level of syncretism between Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, highly political and militaristic tendencies among
groups of Jews,  a passionate connection between Jews throughout the world
with the land of Israel, and the attempt of rabbis to exercise control by
force. These movements are proof that the Jews of the middle east had not
been repressed by Christianity, Islam, or even Jewish leaders.  They were
attracted to a wide range of religious practices, giving reason to question
how successful the rabbinic establishment had been in attracting the
loyalties of some Jews. These movements did not arise at times of acute
distress or trouble; they seem to have come at times of change, times of
rising expectations.  In fact, going against the conventional wisdom which
associates messianic figures with times of deprivation, it can be argued on
the basis of much evidence from Jewish history that messianic movements do
not arise at times of great distress but at times when hope is rising..
Reports about these movements continued to circulate among Jews for
centuries providing opportunities for both subsequent inspiration as well as
for polemics against them.

2.  The Karaites:  The Ananites, Baalei Mikra, or Benai Mikra

At the same time that Jewish messianic movements arose under Islam, the
hegemony of the rabbis was also threatened by the rise of a movement that
would eventually be called the Karaism or the Karaites, from the Hebrew verb
Kara, to read, the root idea of the word Mikra, Bible.  This group,
consisting of those disenfranchised by the rabbis, challenged rabbinic
authority by establishing alternative ways of reexamining the Bible. While
occasionally historians ask whether this movement was a continuation of
earlier sects among the Jews such as the Sadduceans, the usual origins are
traced to Anan ben David. Documents written much after his own time,
sometimes by rabbis, describe much of what was known about his life are
available  (Marcus, no. 47). He born in the middle of the eighth century to
a learned and aristocratic Jewish family. His uncle was the Exilarch, and,
when he was denied the position of Exilarch in favor of his own younger
brother Hananiah, he tried to set up a rival Exilarchate, but he was jailed
by the Caliph, Abu Jaafar Abdullah al-Mansur, 754-775. In jail he met and
received advice from a Muslim cleric, also under arrest, to bribe the
officials and to declare that he represented a new religion that, like
Islam, determined the new month by observing the moon, unlike rabbinic
Judaism which did it on the basis of calculations. This Muslim cleric,
identified as al-Numan ibn-Thabit Abu Hanifah (699-767), the founder of one
of the major schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence, the Hanafis, a school
that was dedicated to using judgment and reason in determining the law.
Many studies of the Karaites focus on the profound similarities of the
development of their legal procedures alongside those of the emerging
schools of Islamic jurisprudence. The similarities of Anan to the Hanifis,
if not due to direct influence, represented only the first stage.  In
Anan's name the  contradictory principles were put forth, "Forsake the words
of the Mishnah and the Talmud and I will compose for you a Talmud of my own.
Search throughouly in the Torah and do not rely upon my opinion."  This
statement reflected the view of Muhammed ibn Idris al-Shafi'i (769-820),
founder of another school of Islamic jurisprudence, the Shafiites, who
believed that his opinion should not be accepted without question. 

Anan's teachings are found in his book Sefer Hamitzvot, "The Book of the
Commandments," an Aramaic collection of laws, modeled on the early geonic
collections of Jewish law. Influenced by biblicism, individualism,  and
rabbinic and Islamic legal methodology, Anan determines the law by relying
on the literal meaning of the Bible, the consensus of the community, and
reasoning by analogy. Practices borrowed from Islam included removing the
shoes and washing the feet before prayer, prostrating during prayer, fasting
for long periods, and praying many times a day and in a certain direction.
Some of Anan's rules were actually more complicated than those of the
rabbis.  Unlike among the rabbis who prevented the first day of Passover
from falling on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday in order to control the day
of the next Yom Kippur, Anan's calendar was not arranged to prevent Yom
Kippur from falling on a Friday or Sunday, which coupled with Sabbath
observance would make celebration very difficult.  For Anan Passover and
Sukkot were only seven days long, while rabbinic tradition extended them a
day longer than their biblical lengths. To determine when the holiday of
Shavuot fell, rabbinic tradition counted from the second day of Passover,
but for Anan Shavuot fell fifty days after the Saturday of Passover and was
always on a Sunday.  For Anan and his followers, there was no celebration of
Hanukah  or the Fast of Esther, both post biblical holidays. The Fast of
Gedaliah fell on the twenty fourth of Tishre, not the third.  The rabbis
allowed lights to be kindled on Friday for use on the Sabbath, but for Anan
before the Sabbath began all lights were extinguished.  Being in the dark
all day, his followers, nevertheless, were not allowed to have sex either,
strangely based on Exodus 34:21, "In plowing time and in harvest time thou
shalt rest," probably a reaction to the fact that sexual relations on the
sabbath constituted an acceptable activity for rabbinic Jews. In
circumcision Anan's followers practiced only milah, cutting the foreskin,
with a scissors, not a knife, and practising neither priah, pulling it back,
nor metzitzah, having an honored relative suck out the first drops of blood
with his mouth.  Among rabbinic Jews, although this is not regularly
practiced any more, it is still followed by some and I could think of a few
relatives that I would want to assign such an honor--I am sure we all could.
Circumcision and the celebration of festivals did not take place on the
Shabbat as they did for rabbinic Jews.  Anan's followers did not use
Tephilin. Karaite laws of consanguinity were more restrictive and they
followed stricter laws against associating with gentiles, particularly
limiting food touched by them. This movement, at first called the Ananites,
continued to grow under Islam.  
        
During the ninth century several prominent thinkers established  diversified
directions for the Karaite movement. Benjamin ben Moses Nahawendi, 830-860,
held in such high esteem among the Karaites, they are often referred to as
followers of Anan and Benjamin. A Persian, who first used the term Karaite,
he relied on using the entire Bible not only the Torah for determining the
law.  His teaching was not essentially directed against the rabbis and he
borrowed from them when the Bible was not clear.  Unlike most Karaites who
used Aramaic or Arabic, he used a clear Hebrew style. He is often depicted
as originator of a liberal tendency of exegetical individualism among
Karaites.  David ben Moses al-Qumsi, a Karaite scholar from Persia,
identified with a rigorous legal tendency among Karaites, opposed the
individualistic Bible study advocated by Nahawendi and favored a strict
adherence to the Bible.  He spoke against Anan, calling him the first among
fools.  Al-Qumsi was involved with a group called Avelei Zion, the mourners
of Zion, whose goal was to mourn publicly for the destruction of the Temple,
to live in Jerusalem, and to raise money for others to live there (still an
important component of Zionism: one Jew raising money from another Jew to
send yet another Jew to live in Israel). In 877 when Palestine and Egypt
fell under the Tulunides and was no longer directly under the control of the
Caliphate, some Karaites saw this area outside the control of the Exilarch
and the Gaonate as an ideal opportunity for the Karaites to establish their
hegemony there. Al-Kumsi reversed the diasporan centrism of Karaism and was
the first Karaite to settle in Jerusalem.  He strongly negated the chances
of survival in the diaspora for any Jews, Rabbanites or Karaites. In an
attempt to show earlier Karaite connections with Zion, apocryphal stories
circulated that Anan had built a synagogue in Jerusalem. Jacob al-Kirkisani,
a tenth century Karaite who  wrote expositions of Karaite law and the
biblical text is best known for his a and Parks, a work that casts the
history of the rabbis in a negative light while speaking about their
opponents with approval, though he does single out some other Karaites for
criticism.  Among sectarian groups he includes discussion of the Samaritans,
the Sadducees, the Rabbanites' crucifixion of Christ, Abu Isa al-Isfahani,
Yudgan, Anan, Benjamin al-Nahawendi, and Daniel al-Qumsi.  His work shows
the influence of rabbinic, patristic, and Islamic writers, especially the
philosophical rationalists of the Kaalam--Mutazilite schools.

The tenth century was the golden age of Karaite literature.  The Karaites
were aggressive in seeking converts and displayed a very strong interest in
Hebrew grammar.  They developed a flourishing academy in Jerusalem until the
Crusades. The movement also spread to Egypt, Spain, Byzantium, the Balkans,
and Turkey. The subsequent history of Karaism includes both syncretistic
tendencies with rabbanite Judaism and isolationist tendencies from it.
Eventually it spread to the Crimea, Lithuania, and modern Palestine.  By the
1930s there were about 10,000 Karaites in Russia and in 1970 in Israel there
were about 7,000. 

3. Hiwi al-Balkhi

Hiwi or Hayyawayh al-Balkhi, a Jewish freethinker from Persia or Afghan in
the late ninth century, whose writings are no longer extant and whose views
can be learned only from the writings of his opponents, many of whom wrote
much later, particularly Saadia Gaon and Abraham ibn Ezra, is often seen as
the father of modern Bible criticism.  He offered two hundred theses against
the Bible.  His views, influenced by questions raised in rabbinic texts
about the Bible, although he did not notice the solutions also offered by
the rabbis. He was also influenced by critiques against Judaism raised by
other religions, and Islamic heretics. He was condemned by both the rabbis
and the Karaites. His views included the arguments that God is not just,
without compassion, and favors evil.  God is not omniscient, not omnipotent,
changes his mind, likes blood and sacrifice, and in the Bible is described
in anthropomorphic terms. Medieval Jewish philosophy, as we shall see, will
address many of these issues.

4. Tensions between the Exilarch and the Geonim.

Within the Rabbanite establishment itself, tensions began to rise between
the Exilarch and the Gaonate.  In the tenth century a controversy between an
Exilarch, Mar Ukbah, and the Gaon of Pumbedita led to the Exilarch being
forced into exile.  

5. Tensions between Palestine and Babylonia

By the tenth century a Gaonate of Palestine also had emerged, although Jews
there still sent rabbinic queries to Babylonia.  It was centered in
Tiberias, perhaps Jerusalem for a while, and Tyre, and although influential
in Egypt, North Africa, Byzantium, and Italy, was usually overshadowed by
the Gaonate of Babylonia.  In 921, the first known Gaon of Palestine, Aaron
Ben Meir, tried to usurp the setting of the Jewish calendar, a prerogative
enjoyed by the Geonim of Babylonia.  A controversy broke out that pitted the
once squabbling parties in Babylonia against those in Palestine. In 922 the
two communities observed Rosh Hashanah on different days.  Not only were
rabbis and Karaites celebrating Jewish holidays on different days, but now
rabbinic Jews celebrated on different days.

*************************************************************************