Kingdom of Israel and Judah . According to the
Tanakh, upon being chosen and becoming king, one was customarily anointed with
holy oil poured on one's head. In David's case, this was done by the
prophet Samuel. Initially, David was king over the
Tribe of Judah only and ruled from
Hebron, but after seven and a half years, the other
Israelite tribes, who found themselves leaderless after the death of
Ish-bosheth, chose him to be their king as well. All subsequent kings in both the ancient first united
Kingdom of Israel and the later
Kingdom of Judah claimed direct descent from King David to validate their claim to the throne in order to rule over the Israelite tribes.
Division after Solomon's death After the death of David's son,
King Solomon, the ten northern tribes of the
Kingdom of Israel rejected the Davidic line, refusing to accept Solomon's son,
Rehoboam, and instead chose as king
Jeroboam and formed the northern
Kingdom of Israel. This kingdom was conquered by the
Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE which biblically and according to archaeology to date exiled much of the bulk population of the Northern Kingdom, thus ending its sovereign status. These are known to history as
The Ten Lost Tribes. However, archaeology and documentation seems at this date to indicate that some of the population were left and intermixed with the Judean populations in the Kingdom of Judea, and two centuries later with the exiled Judean populations in Mesopotamia. The best archaeology and documentation to date also seem to indicate that the remaining non-exiled Israelite peoples in the Samaria highlands have become known as
Samaritans during the classic era and to modern times. Some of this seems to be confirmed by
DNA Analysis.
The Exilarchate Later rabbinical authorities granted the office of exilarch to family members that traced its patrilineal descent from
David, King of Israel. The highest official of Babylonian Jewry was the
exilarch (
Reish Galuta, "Head of the Diaspora"). Those who held the position traced their ancestry to the House of David in the male line.
Middle Ages /
UPenn)|alt=Genealogy of the Exilarchs to David and Adam, Avraham ben Tamim, Cairo Geniza, 1100s (Katz Center/UPenn) The Exilarchate in the
Sasanian Empire was briefly abolished as a result of a revolt by the
Mar-Zutra II in the late 5th century CE, with his son
Mar-Zutra III being denied the office and relocating to
Tiberias, then within the
Byzantine Empire. Mar Ahunai lived in the period succeeding Mar Zutra II, but for almost fifty years after the failed revolt he did not dare to appear in public, and it is not known whether even then () he really acted as Exilarch. The names of Kafnai and his son Haninai, who were Exilarchs in the second half of the 6th century, have been preserved. The Exilarchate in Mesopotamia was officially restored after the
Arab conquest in the 7th century and continued to function during the early
Caliphates. Exilarchs continued to be appointed until the 11th century, with some members of the Davidic line dispersing across the Islamic world. There are conflicting accounts of the fate of the Exilarch family in the 11th century; according to one version
Hezekiah ben David, who was the last Exilarch and also the last
Gaon, was imprisoned and tortured to death. Two of his sons fled to Al-Andalus, where they found refuge with Joseph, the son and successor of
Samuel ibn Naghrillah. However,
The Jewish Quarterly Review mentions that Hezekiah was liberated from prison, and became head of the academy, and is mentioned as such by a contemporary in 1046. An unsuccessful attempt of David ben Daniel of the Davidic line to establish an Exilarchate in the
Fatimid Caliphate failed and ended with his downfall in 1094. In the 11th–15th century, families that descended from the Exilarchs that lived in the South of France (
Narbonne and
Provence) and in northern Iberian peninsula (
Barcelona,
Aragon and
Castile) received the title "
Nasi" in the communities and were called "free men". They had a special economic and social status in the Jewish community, and they were close to their respective governments, some serving as advisers and tax collectors/finance ministers. These families had special rights in Narbonne, Barcelona, and Castile. They possessed real estate and received the title "
Don" and
de la Kblriih (
De la Cavalleria). Among the families of the "Sons of the Free" are the families of
Abravanel and
Benveniste. In his book,
A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, Arthur J. Zuckerman proposes a theory that from 768 to 900 CE a Jewish Princedom ruled by members of the Exilarchs existed in feudal France. However, this theory has been widely contested. Descendants of the house of exilarchs were living in various places long after the office became extinct. The grandson of Hezekiah ben David through his eldest son David ben Chyzkia,
Hiyya al-Daudi, died in 1154 in
Castile according to
Abraham ibn Daud and is the ancestor of the
ibn Yahya family. Several families, as late as the 14th century, traced their descent back to Josiah, the brother of
David ben Zakkai who had been banished to Chorasan (see the genealogies in [Lazarus 1890] pp. 180 et seq.). The descendants of the Karaite Exilarchs have been referred to above. A number of Jewish families in the
Iberian peninsula and within
Mesopotamia continued to preserve the tradition of descent from Exilarchs in the
Late Middle Ages, including the families of
Abravanel,
ibn Yahya and Ben-David. The patriarch of the Coronel Family,
Abraham Senior, is referred to in a letter of 1487 from the Jews of Castile to the Jews of Rome and Lombardy as 'the Exilarch who is over us'. Several Ashkenazi scholars also claimed descent from King David. On his father's side,
Rashi has been claimed to be a 33rd-generation descendant of
Johanan HaSandlar, who was a fourth-generation descendant of
Gamaliel, who was reputedly descended from the Davidic line. Similarly
Maimonides claimed 37 generations between him and
Simeon ben Judah ha-Nasi, who was also a fourth-generation descendant of Gamaliel. Meir Perels traced the ancestry of
Judah Loew ben Bezalel to the
Hai Gaon through Judah Loew's alleged great-great-grandfather
Judah Leib the Elder and therefore also from the Davidic dynasty; however, this claim is widely disputed, by many scholars such as Otto Muneles. Hai Gaon was the son of
Sherira Gaon, who claimed descent from
Rabbah b. Abuha, who belonged to the family of the exilarch, thereby claiming descent from the Davidic line. Sherira's son-in-law was
Elijah ben Menahem HaZaken. The patriarch of the
Meisels family, Yitskhak Eizik Meisels, was an alleged 10th generation descendant of the Exilarch,
Mar Ukba. The
Berduga family of
Meknes claim paternal descent from the Exilarch,
Bostanai. The Jewish banking family
Louis Cahen d'Anvers claimed descent from the Davidic Line Rabbi
Yosef Dayan, who is a modern-day claimant to the Davidic throne in Israel and the founder of the Monarchist party
Malchut Israel, descends from the
Dayan family of
Aleppo, who paternally descend from Hasan ben Zakkai, the younger brother of the Exilarch
David I (d. 940). One of Hasan's descendants Solomon ben Azariah ha-Nasi settled in Aleppo were the family became Dayan's (judges) of the city and thus adopted the surname Dayan. The
Ruzhin (Hasidic dynasty) line is traced to King David by way of Rabbi
Yohanan, the sandal-maker and master in the
Talmud. Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, could trace his lineage back to Rabbi Shnuer Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad Hasidic movement, and ultimately to King David. == In Judaism ==