TO COMPREHEND THE CHARACTER and achievement of Rabbi Sa'adyah ben Joseph, or, as he is better known, Sa'adyah Gaon, it will be necessary to gain some idea of the background of his age. In Sa'adyah's day, the vastmajority of Jews viewed them selves as subject to the authority of one or another of the two ancient Jewish centres, Palestine and Babylonia, and sometimes both. The recognized spiritual leaders of these centres, known as geonim, headed the prestigious and internationally renowned academies of Sura and Pumbedita in Babylonia and the central academy in Palestine, which operated in different cities at different times, chieflyTiberias and Jerusalem. Despite the great importance of this era as a link in the chain of Jewish history, it is not very well known to readers, so I will outline it here in brief before going on to consider the unique figure of Sa'adyah Gaon.

The apparently simple question we must initially pose is one of chronological boundaries: when did the geonic period begin and end? The two transitional points are somewhat difficult to pin down, though for different reasons. If we approach the question of time from the perspective of rabbinic literature, we find that the age of the geonim was preceded by an even more obscure era, that of the savora'im. Available sources that might shed light on the period of the savora'im are scarce indeed, and the nature of their endeavours—or even the fact of their existence—remains a matter of controversy. What follows is based mainly on a unique source of tremendous importance for our knowledge of Jewish history in the first millennium CE, the famous Epistle of Sherira Gaon, written in 986. This epistle clearly belongs to the characteristic geonic genre known as responsa literature, consisting of questions, mostly on talmudic and halakhic issues, sent by Jews from communities around the world to the senior members of the academies headed by the geonim and the replies they received. Nevertheless, the Epistle of SheriraGaon stands out as extremely atypical, both in content and in scope. It is, in fact, a small book containing R. Sherira's answers (and those of other sages in the academy who may have contributed to the composition) to queries sent by the sages of Qayrawan—an important Jewish centre of the day in what is now Tunisia—headed by a famous scholar, Jacob ben Nissim ibn Shahin.