The Caliph granted him the authority to appoint civil judges, and heads of the rabbinical academies at Sura, Pumbedita and Nehardea.

[11] It is known also that Ali gave a friendly reception to the contemporary Gaon Isaac;[12] and it is highly probable, therefore, that he honored the exilarch in certain ways as the official representative of the Jews.

Another son, Hasdai I, is mentioned in the Seder Olam Zutta as succeeding him to the office of exilarch, as well as Baradoi, both children of his Jewish wife.

The exilarch lived with her without having married her, and according to the rabbinical law she should previously have received her "letter of freedom," for, being a prisoner of war, she had become an Arabian slave, and as such had been presented to Bostanai.

No one but an old Jewish sage was able to interpret the dream, and he said: "The garden represents the Davidic line, all of whose descendants you have destroyed except a woman with her unborn boy.

The veracity of this account was disputed by Sherira ben Hanina who claimed his own lineage traces to a pre-Bostanaian branch of the Davidic line.

[24] The king, moved thereby, showered favors upon him, made him an exilarch, and gave him the power to appoint judges of the Jews and the heads of the three academies, Nehardea, Sura, and Pumbedita.

The genizah fragment says that the incident with the wasp occurred in the presence of the calif Omar, before whom Bostanai as a youth of sixteen had brought a dispute with a sheikh, who filled his office during the exilarch's minority, and then refused to give it up.

They had many children, but their legitimacy was assailed after their father's death by the exilarch's other sons ("Ma'aseh Bostanai," several times printed under different titles[25]).

It is true, however, that the Bostanaites were hated by the scholars and the pious men, probably in part because Anan, founder of the Karaite etc., was a descendant of Bostanai.