The city of Pumbedita was said to have possessed a Jewish population since the days of
Second Temple of Jerusalem. The city had a large
Jewish population and was famed for its
Pumbedita Academy, whose scholarship, together with the city of
Sura, gave rise to the
Babylonian Talmud. The academy there was founded by
Judah ben Ezekiel in the late third century. The academy was established after the destruction of the academy of
Nehardea. Nehardea, being the capital city, was destroyed during the
Persian–Palmyrian war.
Location Guy Le Strange, in his geography of
Mesopotamia in the
Abbasid era constructed from
Ibn Serapion (ca. 900), cited a possible location for Pumbedita: :The Nahr-al-Badāt was a long drainage channel taken from the left bank of the Kūfah arm of the Euphrates, at a
day's journey to the north of Kūfah city, probably near the town of Kanṭarah-al-Kūfah . . . [which] probably lay adjacent to, or possibly was identical with, the Hebrew Pombedita. However, this location is too far south and has been rejected by more recent scholarship.
Sherira ben Hanina (tentative ascription) writes that in Arabic the Bedita is called ''al-Bedei'a''. The twelfth-century travel account of
Benjamin of Tudela gives this description: :. . . and from there it is two days to
Al-Anbar, which is Pumbedita in Nehardea. Here are about 3,000 Jews, including scholars, at the head of which are Rabbi Chen the teacher, Rabbi Moses, and Rabbi Jehoakim. Also here are the graves of Rabbi Judah and
Samuel, and before each is the synagogue which they built in life, and that of
Bostanai the prince and
exilarch, and those of
Rabbi Nathan and Rabbi Nahman bar Pappa.
Al-Anbar ("the granaries") is mentioned by Ibn Serapion, and Strange identifies it with "the ruins named
Sifeyra". According to
William McGuckin de Slane, it lay ten
parasangs to the west of Baghdad. However,
Michael Jan de Goeje reads
Al-Jubbar in place of
Al-Anbar, and identifies it with , an identification already made by
Jean-Baptiste d'Anville.
William Francis Ainsworth reads
Aliobar and relates to the also-obscure "Olabus" mentioned by
Isidore of Charax. ==See also==