Reevaluating the Authority of the Babylonian Exilarch in Umayyad Iraq

• In Event: Rethinking "Jewish Self-Government" under Medieval Islam

Abstract

This paper re-evaluates evidence for the authority of the Babylonian exilarch in Umayyad-era (c. 661-750) Iraq. The prevailing historiographic narrative holds that the Muslim rulers recognized the exilarch Bustanay as the leader of the caliphate’s Jews immediately after the Islamic conquest and that, from then until the mid-ninth century, the Muslim rulers recognized the exilarch as the head of the Jews.

In this paper, I analyze geonic responsa from the seventh and eighth century in dialogue with evidence from medieval Arabic and Syriac chronicles to reconstruct the activities of the Babylonian exilarchs and other Jewish communal leaders during the Umayyad period. In contrast to the prevailing narrative, I demonstrate that the Muslim government almost certainly did not recognize the exilarch as the undisputed leader of the caliphate’s Jews, nor did they empower him in any way. Yet even in the absence of any official imperial recognition, the exilarch’s status among his fellow Jews likely did increase during the Umayyad period.

In sum, the legend of Bustanay and the caliph and its presumption of exilarchic stability during the transition from Sasanian to Islamic rule obscures a much more interesting story: during an era of political tumult and uncertainty, rabbinic leaders reorganized and revitalized their own institutions of communal leadership, including that of the exilarchate. In doing so, they established an enduring and uniquely Islamicate paradigm of Jewish communal “autonomy” that would endure for centuries to come.

Author

• Jennifer Grayson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill