Pumbedita Academy Founded

Rav Yehudah founded the academy at Pumbedita on the Euphrates, which became famous for sharp dialectical reasoning and complex argumentation. It rivaled and complemented Sura throughout the Amoraic and Geonic periods and produced many of the leading legal authorities of Babylonian Jewry. Its heads corresponded with communities from Spain to Persia, effectively governing Jewish practice across the Diaspora. The academy survived, with interruptions and relocations, into the eleventh century.