Exilarch
The exilarch[a] was the leader of the Jewish community in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) during the era of the Parthians, Sasanians and Abbasid Caliphate up until the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, with intermittent gaps due to ongoing political developments.
The exilarch was regarded by the Jewish community as the royal heir of the House of David and held a place of prominence as both a rabbinical authority and as a noble within the Persian and Arab court.
[5] The position was similarly called in Aramaic (ריש גלותא Reysh Galuta or Resh Galvata) and Arabic (رأس الجالوت Raas al-Galut.
The following are enumerated as his predecessors in office: Salathiel, Zerubbabel, Meshullam, Hananiah, Berechiah, Hasadiah, Jesaiah, Obadiah, and Shemaiah, Shecaniah, and Hezekiah.
At about this same time, Rabbi Nathan, a member of the house of exilarch, came to Galilee, where the Sanhedrin met and where the Nasi resided following the Jewish expulsion from Jerusalem.
His supposed Davidic genealogical origins suggested to Rabbi Meïr the plan of making the Babylonian scholar nasi (prince) in place of the Hillelite Simon ben Gamaliel.
Rabbi Meïr's attempt, however, seems to have led Judah I to fear that the Babylonian exilarch might come to Judea to claim the office from Hillel the Elder's descendant.
He discussed the subject with the Babylonian scholar Hiyya, a prominent member of his school,[41] saying that he would pay due honor to the exilarch should the latter come but that he would not renounce the office of nasi in his favor.
[43] A tannaitic exposition of Genesis 49:10[44] which contrasts the Babylonian exilarchs, ruling by force, with Hillel's descendants, teaching in public, evidently intends to cast a negative reflection on the former.
However, Judah I had to listen at his own table to the statement of the youthful sons of the Hiyya above about the same tannaitic exposition, that "the Messiah can not appear until the exilarchate at Babylon and the patriarchate at Jerusalem shall have ceased".
[46] Nathan 'Ukban, also known as Mar 'Ukban, was the contemporary of Rav and Samuel, who also occupied a prominent position among the scholars of Babylon' [47] and, according to Sherira Gaon,[48] was also exilarch.
[51] According to Seder Olam Zutta, in Nehemiah's time, the 245th year after the destruction of the Temple (313 CE), there took place a great religious persecution by the Persians, of which, however, no details are known.
[53] The conquest of Armenia (337) by Shapur (Sapor) II is mentioned in the chronicle as a historical event occurring during the time of Nathan Ukban III.
The latter's son Huna is then mentioned as successor, being the fourth exilarch of that name; he died in 441, according to a trustworthy source, the "Seder Tannaim wa-Amoraim."
Mar Zutra II, who came into office at the age of fifteen, took advantage of the confusion into which Mazdak's communistic attempts had plunged Persia, to obtain by force of arms for a short time a sort of political independence for the Jews of Babylon.
[59] Ukban IV is mentioned as exilarch immediately following the death of Hasdai II; he was deposed at the instigation of Kohen-Zedek, Gaon of Pumbedita, but was reinstated in 918 on account of some Arabic verses with which he greeted the caliph al-Muqtadir.
When Gaon Hai died in 1038, nearly a century after Saadia's death, the members of his academy could not find a more worthy successor than the exilarch Hezekiah, a great-grandson of David ben Zakkai, who thereafter filled both offices.
A contemporary document, the Megillah of the gaon Abiathar from the land of Israel, gives an authentic account of this episode of the Egyptian Exilarchate, which ended with the downfall of David ben Daniel in 1094.
The authenticity of the names of the amoraim designated as the scholars "guiding" the several exilarchs, is, in the case of those passages in which the text is beyond dispute, supported by internal chronological evidence also.
Some of the Babylonian amoraim were closely related to the house of the exilarchs, as, for example, Rabba ben Abuha, whom Gaon Sherira, claiming Davidian descent, named as his ancestor.
[64] The term "dayyanei di baba" ("judges of the gate"), which was applied in the post-Talmudic time to the members of the court of the exilarch, is derived from the phrase just quoted.
There are many anecdotes of the annoyances and indignities the scholars had to suffer at the hands of the exilarchs' servants, such as the case of Amram the Pious,[70] of Hiyya of Parwa,[71] and of Abba ben Marta.
[73] Once when certain preparations which the exilarch was making in his park for alleviating the strictness of the Sabbath law were interrupted by Raba and his pupils, he exclaimed, in the words of Jeremiah 4:22, "They are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge".
An old anecdote was repeated in the land of Israel concerning a splendid feast which the exilarch once gave to the tanna Judah ben Bathyra at Nisibis on the eve of Tisha Beav.
This prerogative is referred to also in the account of the installation of the exilarch in the Arabic period, and this gives color to the assumption that the ceremonies, as recounted in this document, were based in part on usages taken over from the Persian time.
[96] The following is a translation of a portion of an account of the exilarchy in the Arabic period, written by Nathan ha-Babli in the early 10th century, and included in Abraham Zacuto's "Yuhasin" and in Neubauer's "Mediaeval Jewish Chronicles,":[97] The members of the two academies [Sura and Pumbedita], led by the two heads [the geonim] as well as by the leaders of the community, assemble in the house of an especially prominent man before the Sabbath on which the installation of the exilarch is to take place.
Then the leader in prayer steps in front of the platform and, in a low voice audible only to those close by, and accompanied by the 'Amen' of the choir, addresses the exilarch with a benediction, prepared long beforehand.
In regard to Nathan ha-Babli's additional account as to the income and the functions of the exilarch (which refers, however, only to the time of the narrator), it may be noted that he received taxes, amounting altogether to 700 gold denarii a year, chiefly from the provinces Nahrawan, Farsistan, and Holwan.
In the first quarter of the 11th century, not long before the extinction of the exilarchate, Ibn Hazm made the following remark in regard to the dignity: "The ras al-jalut has no power whatever over the Jews or over other persons; he has merely a title, to which is attached neither authority nor prerogatives of any kind".
The Aramaic prayer "Yekum Purkan", which was used once in Babylon in pronouncing the blessing upon the leaders there, including the "reshe galwata" (the exilarchs), is still recited in most synagogues.
