Saʿadyah Gaon
SAʿADYAH GAON (882–942), properly Saʿadyah ben Yosef al-Fayyumī, was a Jewish theologian, jurist, scholar, and gaon ("head, eminence") of the rabbinic academy at Sura, Babylonia. Saʿadyah was born in Dilaẓ (modern Abu Suwayr) in the Faiyūm district of Upper Egypt. Virtually nothing is known about his family and early education. By age twenty-three, however, he had corresponded with the noted Jewish Neoplatonist Yitsḥaq Israeli (c. 855–955), published the first Hebrew dictionary (Sefer ha-agron), and composed a polemic against the Karaite schismatic ʿAnan ben David (fl. 760). After leaving Egypt, Saʿadyah spent time in both Palestine and Syria but eventually, in 921 or 922, settled in Babylonia. There he championed the cause of the Babylonian rabbis in a dispute with Palestinian authorities over fixing the religious calendar and published his views in two treatises, Sefer ha-zikkaron and Sefer ha-moʿadim. Recognizing his ability, the exilarch, or hereditary leader of the Jewish community, awarded Saʿadyah with an academic appointment in 922 and subsequently elevated him to the gaonate of Sura. Soon afterward, in 930, a legal dispute between the two developed into a bitter political struggle in which each deposed the other from office. Saʿadyah was driven into formal retirement in Baghdad, but, ultimately, reconciliation led to his reinstatement in 937.
