Sura Academy Founded

Around 225, a few years after returning from the Land of Israel, where he had studied with Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, Rav founded an academy at Sura on the Euphrates in Babylonia. Together with Pumbedita, founded a generation later by his student Rav Yehudah bar Yehezkel after the destruction of Nehardea in 259, it became one of the two great academies of Babylonian Jewry. Twice a year, in the months of Adar and Elul, the kallah gatherings brought working men from across Babylonia to study a tractate announced in advance.

Under Rav Ashi, who headed Sura from about 375 to 427, the editing of the Babylonian Talmud began; later heads of Sura held the title Gaon and answered questions from Jewish communities as far as Spain and North Africa. Rav Amram Gaon of Sura sent out the first complete prayer book around 860, and Saadia Gaon led the academy from 928. Sura moved to Baghdad around 900 and faded in the early 1000s, after roughly eight centuries of authority.