Iggeret of Rabbi Sherira Gaon

Iggeret of Rabbi Sherira Gaon (Hebrew: אגרת רב שרירא גאון), also known as the Letter of Rav Sherira Gaon, and the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon, is a responsum penned in the late 10th century (987 CE) in the Pumbedita Academy by Sherira ben Hanina, the Chief Rabbi and scholar of Babylonian Jewry, to Rabbi Jacob ben Nissim of Kairouan, in which he methodologically details the development of rabbinic literature, bringing down a chronological list of the Sages of Israel from the time of the compilation of the Mishnah, to the subsequent rabbinic works (Tosefta, Sifra, Sifre, etc.

Sherira is one of the first to present a detailed discussion on the Savoraim, including their activity in revising and finishing the Talmud.

Sherira clearly and lucidly answers all these questions, throwing light upon many obscure passages of Jewish history.

As a chronicler, he exposes monumental documented information about the rabbis and the Babylonian communities, especially the Jewish seats of learning (academies) at Sura and Pumpeditha.

[2] Apparently, he also refers to some mythical imagery while reconstructing the chronology of the Halakhah as a profound historical picture.

120) is a 13th or 14th-century copy written on paper, in what appears to be North African or Greek rabbinic script, measuring 270 x 202 mm, and composed of a higher proportion of Hebrew.

The scholarly consensus, up to and including Solomon Schechter, was that the "Spanish" recension was the original version, and this is strongly urged by Rabbi Israel Moses Hazan.

[10] More recent scholarship holds that the names are wrongly attributed: the so-called "French" version is the older, but is in fact a product not of France but of Spain.