Mar Rab Mar

Mar Rab Mar (Mar Rav Mar) stands at the head of the list of Geonim of Sura preserved in the Epistle of Sherira Gaon, the letter Sherira sent to the Jews of Kairouan in 987 to explain how the Talmud and its tradition had been handed down. According to that chronology he took office around 609, as the Savoraim, the final editors of the Babylonian Talmud, gave way to a new kind of leadership. Little more is known of his life or teachings.

Sura had been founded by Rav (Abba Arikha) around 225, and with Pumbedita it formed the pair of great Babylonian yeshivot. Under the Geonim, whose title comes from "Geon Yaakov", "the pride of Jacob" (Psalm 47:5), these academies answered questions from communities across the Jewish world for more than four hundred years, making Babylonia the center of Jewish law until the 1000s.