Hezekiah Gaon
Hezekiah Gaon · Historical & Religious Figures
Exilarch and last Gaon of Pumbedita, whose imprisonment and death closed the age of the Geonim after eight centuries of Babylonian leadership
fin du Xe siècle, Bagdad, califat abbasside (Irak) — vers 1040 (ou après 1046 selon d'autres sources), Bagdad
Bagdad, Poumbedita
Hezekiah Gaon is recognized among Jewish contributors to Historical & Religious Figures — Exilarch and last Gaon of Pumbedita, whose imprisonment and death closed the age of the Geonim after eight centuries of Babylonian leadership
Origins and early life
Hezekiah ben David was born in Baghdad at the end of the tenth century into the house of the exilarchs, the princes of the Babylonian Jews who traced their descent from King David and who, for eight hundred years under Parthians, Sasanians and caliphs, had stood at the head of the largest Jewish community in the world; he was, by every account, a Jew of the most illustrious lineage his people possessed, and this fiche has no more to establish.
Work and career
He held the exilarchate himself, and when Hai Gaon, the greatest of the heads of the academy of Pumbedita, died in 1038 at the age of ninety-nine, Hezekiah was chosen to succeed him — uniting in one person, for the first time, the lay princedom and the rabbinic headship of Babylonian Jewry. He led the academy, in the accounts that survive, for two years.
Later years
Then, according to Abraham ibn Daud's Book of Tradition, written a century later in Spain, informers denounced him to the caliph's court; he was imprisoned, tortured and died in prison, around 1040 — though other sources place his death after 1046 — and two of his sons fled to Muslim Spain, where Joseph ibn Naghrela, son and successor of Samuel ha-Nagid, the vizier of Granada, sheltered them. With him the academy of Pumbedita and the office of Gaon came to an end, and with them the age of the Geonim, whose responsa had governed Jewish law from Persia to Spain since the seventh century; the center of Jewish learning passed, as ibn Daud tells it, to the West. His descendants claimed the title of exilarch into the twelfth century, but the thing itself died with him.
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Source: https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/hezekiah-ben-david
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Exilarch and last Gaon of Pumbedita, whose imprisonment and death closed the age of the Geonim after eight centuries of Babylonian leadership
Source: https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/hezekiah-ben-david
