Cultivating Roots: The Promotion of Exilarchal Ties to David in the Middle Ages

AJS Review

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 91-110

  Franklin, Arnold ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 85008566637     PISSN: 03640094     EISSN: 14754541     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0364009405000048     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. See Bodl. Ms. Heb. a 3, f. 24, line 3 in Gil, Be-malkhut YishmaGHel, 2:246-51. Cf. S. D. Goitein, “Nesi'ei Mosul ve-h.urban bateihem be-regidat hadamah,” in Sefer Yosef Braslavi, ed. Y. Ben-Shem, et al. (Tel Aviv, 1970), 495ff. Goitein assumed the contents of the document in question to comprise a single letter, but Gil convincingly suggests that it is a copy of four separate letters that were transcribed serially. The passage cited in the body of the text comes from the first of these four letters, and the date “December 1236” appears at the end of the last one.
2. See Richard Gottheil, “An Eleventh-Century Document Concerning a Cairo Synagogue,” Jewish Quarterly Review o.s. 19 (1906-07): 530.
3. See David Goodblatt, The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr, 1994), 147-69, 280-90. On the exilarchate in the rabbinic period, see Jacob Neusner, History of the Jews in Babylonia, 5 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965-1970), 1:50-57, 97-112, 2:92-125, 3:41-94, 4:73-124, 5:45-59, 95-105, 124-27, 248-59; Isaiah Gafni, Yahadut Bavel umosdoteha bi-tekufat ha-talmud (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1975), 53-77; Moshe Beer, Rashut ha-golah be-Bavel bi-yemei ha-mishnah veha-talmud (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1970).
4. Y. Sotah 7:6.
5. See B. Shabbat 55a, with reference to Jeremiah 21:12.
6. B. Sanhedrin 38a. Compare similar statements in B. Sanhedrin 98a, each of which begins with the formulaic phrase “The Son of David will arrive only after. ” Rabbi H. ayya's sons’ comment is an ironic inversion of these that not only accuses the exilarchate and the patriarchate of corruption, but also implicitly rejects whatever messianic claims may have been associated with those offices. For evidence of messianic hopes pinned on Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, see Moshe Aberbach, “H. izkiyahu melekh Yehudah ve-rabi Yehudah ha-nasiH: heksherim meshih.iyim,” Tarbiz 53 (1984): 353-71.
7. See Zunz, Ha-derashot be-YisraHel, 63-65, 307-09; Jacob Liver, Toldot bet David: mi-h. urban mamlekhet Yehudah ve-Gad le-ah. ar h. urban ha-bayit ha-sheni (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1959), 42-45.
8. See the sources mentioned in vLeir, Toldot bet David, 42 n. 18.
9. A vraham Grossman, Rashut ha-golah be-Bavel bi-tekufat ha-geHonim (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1984), 78.
10. F or an analysis of a number of actual genealogies that have been preserved, see Gil, Bemalkhut YishmaGHel, 1:93-101.
11. See, for example, Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. and trans. M. Adler (London, 1907), 39, 48 (English); Avraham David, “Sibuv rabi Petah.yah me-Regensburg benusah. h. adash,” Kovez. Gal yad n.s. 13 [23] (1996): 259, 261.
12. Berlin MS Or. Heb. Oct. 517, f. 64b, cited in Mann, Texts and Studies, 2:254.
13. Me-HItalyah li-Yerushalayim: Higrotav shel rabi GOvadyah mi-Bartenura me-HErez. YisraHel, ed. M. Hartom and Avraham David (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1997), 56.
14. See the passage from Akrish's MaGaseh bet David cited in Chaim Tykocinski “Bustanai rosh ha-golah,” Devir 1 (1923): 162.
15. See the passage from Akrish's MaGaseh bet David cited in Chaim Tykocinski “Bustanai rosh ha-golah,”, 3:220. See also Avraham Ben-Jacob, “Mekorot h. adashim le-toldot yehudei Bavel bamehot ha-12 veha-13,” Zion 15 (1950): 61-62.
16. See the letter, TS 13J35.1 +TS 20.94r, in Moshe Gil, HErez. YisraHel ba-tekufah ha-muslemit ha-rishonah (634-1099), 3 vols. (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1983), 2:37-40.
17. See the letter, 39, lines 4-254.
18. See the text, TS 13J25.21, in MannJ, ews in Egypt, 2:207-208.
19. See the text, lines 3-4, 12-13. For a similar use of gevir as an epithet for David see Ezra Fleischer, “Kavim h.adashim li-demuto shel rabi Danihel ben Ezrah (sic), nasih ve-gahon,” Shalem 1 (1974): 69, line 132. This usage does not appear in Yonah David, Leksikon ha-kinuyim bi-leshon ha-payetanim (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2001).
20. See Mann, Jews in Egypt, 2:208.
21. Jews in Egypt, 1:174.
22. See the preliminary observations in S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967-94), 3:2-15.
23. See Gil, HErez. YisraHel, 2:9-10.
24. See TS 8K222. in MannJ, ews in Egypt, 2:210.
25. See the text of the poem in Fleischer, “Kavim h. adashim,” and Gil's corrections in History of Palestine, 660 n. 125.
26. Fleischer, “Kavim h. adashim,” 57.
27. Tah. kemoni, ed. Y. Toporovsky (Tel Aviv, 1952), 24ff.
28. See Mark Cohen, Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt: The Origins of the Office of Head of the Jews, ca. 1065-1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 196-212.
29. Nahman Coronel, H. amishah kuntresim (1864), 107b-111a.
30. F or a recent review of the relevant primary and secondary sources on Bustanai, see Gil, Bemalkhut YishmaGHel, 1:58-80. For the Judeo-Arabic text, see H. amishah kuntresim, 2:4-10, with references to earlier editions and publications. See also idem, “Ha-mifgash ha-bavli,” and Tykocinski, “Bustanai rosh hagolah.”
31. F or a consideration of the specific context in which the story was copied, see Gil, “Ha-mifgash ha-bavli,” 39-41. For an entirely different valuation of Bustanai, one that celebrates him as a noble ancestor, see the poem, discussed above, in honor of Daniel ben gAzaryah (Fleischer, “Kavim h. adashim,” 70), in which the nasiH and gaHon is enthusiastically described as “a spark of Bustanai.”
32. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:6-8. On the significance of women's names, see F or a consideration of the specific context in which the story was copied., 313-19.
33. Both Mann and Goitein noted the recurrence of Davidic names in the ancestor lists of Karaite nesiHim. See Mann, Jews in Egypt, 2:215; Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:427 n. 32. The observation is also true for Rabbanites.
34. See Gil, History of Palestine, 545. For the rabbinic view that Daniel was from the Davidic family, possibly on the basis of 1 Chronicles 3:1, see B. Sanhedrin 83b.
35. See Gil, Be-malkhut YishmaGHel, 1:109-14, 431-33.
36. See the genealogy in Coronel, H. amishah kuntresim, 110a.
37. See Zvi Malachi, Sugyot ba-sifrut ha-Givrit shel yemei ha-benayim (Tel Aviv: Nophet, 1971).
38. 42-51. On the identity of Zuta see Menahem Ben-Sasson, “Maimonides in Egypt: The First Stage,” in Maimonidean Studies, ed. Arthur Hyman (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1991), 2:3-30, with references there to earlier views.
39. See Malachi, Sugyot, 46. Corroboration of this charge comes in a letter (TS 16.272) from Alexandria, written around 1180, in which it is reported that Zuta “called himself the Messiah.” For the most recent discussion of this document, with references to earlier citations, see Mordechai Friedman, Ha-Rambam, ha-mashiah. be-Teman veha-shemad (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2002), 23.
40. On the messianic names used by geHonim, see Goitein, Mediterannean Society, 5:618 n. 28. For the Abbasids, see Bernard Lewis, “The Regnal Titles of the First Abbasid Caliphs” in Dr. Zakir Husayn Presentation Volume (1968), 13-22. For rituals associated with the names of the Fatimid caliphs, see Paula Sanders, Ritual, Politics, and the City in Fatimid Cairo (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 27.
41. In addition to the sources cited below, see TS 13J35.1 TS 20.94r in Gil, HErez. YisraHel, 2:37-40, which mentions the arrival of “a large letter sealed with the seal of the exilarchate (h. atum betabaGat nesiHut).” Seals borne by exilarchal dynasts are also mentioned in the travel accounts of Benjamin of Tudela and Samuel ben Samson, both of whom recognize them as a special dispensation of the Muslim authorities. Samuel ben Samson speaks of a nasiHwho served as his guide in Hebron who had “a seal from the ruler and from Muhammad.” See Shraga Schultz, “Mikhtav me-Rabi Shemuel ben Rabi Shimson,” Ha-z.ofeh le-h. okhmat YisraHel 14 (1930): 73. Benjamin of Tudela describes the exilarch's turban, from which the “seal of Muhammad” was suspended. See Itinerary, 40 (English). Consider also Joseph Sambari's interest in the signature of the nasiH Judah ben Josiah in Sefer divrei Yosef, ed. Shimon Shtober (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1994), 82, 141, 219.
42. F or the seal of the gaHon Nehemiah ben Kohen Z. edeq (fl. mid-tenth century), see the letter (Mosseri VIII 479.9) published in Igeret rav Sherira gaHon, ed. Binyamin Lewin (Haifa, 1921), 133-34. Unlike the seals of Davidic dynasts considered here, Nehemiah's was not adorned with images and bore only the legend “Neh.emiyah gaHon ben gaHon.”
43. Consider also the description of the lions that adorned Solomon's throne in 1 Kings 10:19-20.
44. For the connection between the “lion's whelp” and David, see, e.g., Rashi's comments on Genesis 49:9. For the suggestion that a lion's image appeared on the banner of the tribe of Judah, with reference to Genesis 49:9, see the sources cited in Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 7 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1968), 3:234, 237, 6:82. The view that the kings of Judah also had pennants bearing the image of a lion is found in Ibn Daud, Book of Tradition, 59 (English). On the lion as a symbol for the exilarchate in the medieval Italian chronicle Megilat Ah. imaGaz., see Robert Bonfil, “Mitus, retorikah, historiyah?: giyun be-Megilat Ah.imagaz.,” in Tarbut ve-h. evrah be-toldot YisraHel bi-yemei ha-benayim: kovez. maHamarim le-zikhro shel H. ayim Hillel Ben-Sasson, ed. Menahem Ben-Sasson, et al. (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1989), 109-14.
45. The seal, which is part of a private collection, is described in Shaul Shaked, “Jewish and Christian Seals of the Sassanid Period,” in Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, ed. Miriam Rosen-Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1977), 25-26, 31. A photograph of a modern impression of the seal is provided at the end of the book, plate 4, #3. Shaked's reservations in that article about dating the seal to the Sassanid period are amplified in his “Epigraphica Judaeo-Iranica,” in Studies in Judaism and Islam Presented to Shelomo Dov Goitein, ed. Shelomo Morag, et al. (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1981), 67, where he notes the late features in the seal's wording and arrangement and suggests that it dates from the tenth century. See also the concurring view of Yitzhak Naveh cited in Moshe Beer, “Sheloshah h. otamot shel yehudim be-Bavel u-zemanam,” Tarbiz 52 (1983): 441 n. 35, though Beer himself prefers an earlier dating.
46. F or Heman's ties to the exilarchal family, see Neubauer, Mediaeval Jewish Chronicles, 2:82-83; Menahem Zulay, “Piyutei rabi Neh.emiyah ben Shelomo ben Heman ha-nasih,” Studies of the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry in Jerusalem 4 (1938): 197-246.
47. It is instructive to compare Heman's seal with that of another exilarchal dynast, Huna bar Nathan, also discussed in Shaked, “Epigraphica Judaeo-Iranica,” (a photograph of the seal's impression is provided at the end of the volume, plate 5-a). Unlike that of Heman, Huna bar Nathan's seal can be dated with confidence to the Sassanid period. Engraved around its top are the words “Huna bar Nathan,” and below are depicted three relatively common motifs in Sassanid-era Jewish iconography: a palm branch, an etrog, and an incense shovel. Neither the seal's simple legend, nor its accompanying imagery, speaks to Huna's Davidic ancestry. It is tempting to conclude that the incorporation of Davidic markers in Heman's tenth-century seal reflects a societal recognition of Davidic ancestry absent in Huna's time. Iconographic evidence, then, would seem to correlate with the shifts noted in connection with naming practices and genealogies, shifts that point to Arab-Islamic culture's influence on the significance and meaning of Davidic ancestry in Jewish society in the Near East. Such a conclusion conforms, in broad strokes, with Shaked's classification, which distinguishes between “early,” i.e., pre-Islamic, Jewish seals bearing only the owner's name and in certain cases a conventional iconographic image, and “late,” i.e., Islamic-era, seals, which tend to be more embellished and personalized.
48. Dropsie 156, cited in Shraga Abramson, GInyanut be-sifrut ha-geHonim (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1974), 107 n. 20. Another copy of the same court document, Mosseri L 10, has the word aryeh (lion) after the gaHon's name. See Jacob Mann, “Gaonic Studies,” in Hebrew Union College Jubilee Volume (1875-1925), ed. D. Philipson, et al. (Cincinnati, 1925), 257-58.
49. See Kovez. teshuvot ha-Rambam ve-igrotav, ed. Abraham Lichtenberg (Leipzig, 1859), section 3:21-2.
50. B. Sanhedrin 5a.
51. See, for example, Fleischer, “Kavim h. adashim,” 68; Simha Assaf, Kovez. shel igrot shel rabi ShemuHel ben GEli u-venei doro (Jerusalem: Makor, 1970), 130; Naftali Wieder, “Shalosh derashot letaganit geshamim min ha-genizah-shetayim be-haramit gelilit,” Tarbiz 54 (1985): 58; Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, 40 (Hebrew).
52. See the letter in GilH,E rez. YisraHel, 2:405-07.
53. See Menahem Zulay, “Piyutim le-zekher mhoeragot shonim,” Studies of the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry in Jerusalem 3 (1936): 176-83.
54. On this practice see Mordechai Akiva Friedman, “gIturei h. otmim ve-shitah meyuh. edet lez. iyun taharikh,” Tarbiz 48 (1978): 160-63.
55. See Zulay, “Piyutim,” 176.
56. Ibn Daud, Book of Tradition, 59.
57. Sherira ben H. ananiah, GIgeret rav Sherira, 60, cf. 82.
58. Sherira ben H. ananiah., 92.
59. Sherira ben H. ananiah., 73.
60. See, for example, Cohen's discussion of the genealogical tradition employed in medieval “chain of transmission” histories in Ibn Daud, Book of Tradition, l-lvi.
61. See Dov Yarden, Shirei ha-h. ol le-rabi Shelomo Ibn Gabirol (Jerusalem, 1975), 1:302-03. However, compare the long eulogy by Samuel ha-Nagid (d. 1056), which makes no reference to Hayya's ancestry, in idem, Divan ShemuHel ha-nagid (Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College Press, 1966), 1:231-36.
62. C. del Valle and G. Stemberger, El Orden de las Generaciones Seder ha-dorot, (Alcobendas: Aben Ezra Ediciones, 1997), 56 (Hebrew). See also Ibn Danan's chronology of Jewish kings, TaHarikh malkhei Yehudah ve-Yisrael (History of the Kings of Judah and Israel). In a digression Ibn Danan lists several generations of descendants of Zerubbabel in Babylonia, and then concludes: “and from this noble line (came) the Babylonian exilarchs, and our master Rabbi Hayya Gaon the son of Rabbi Sherira Gaon.” See Da vid Ovadiah, Fas ve-h. akhameha, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1979), 2:25.
63. See, for example, Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972), s.v. “Seals,” where it is taken as a statement of fact that the exilarchate's seal bore the image of a fly.