Early life Saadia was born in Dilāẓ in the
Faiyum in
Middle Egypt in 892. He immigrated to
Palestine (in the Abbasid province of
Bilad Al-Sham) in 915 at the age of 23, where he studied in
Tiberias under the scholar Abu Kathir Yaḥya al-Katib (known as
Eli ben Yehudah ha-Nazir in Hebrew), a Jewish
mutakallim or theologian also mentioned by
ibn Ḥazm. In 926, Saadia settled permanently in
Lower Mesopotamia, known to Jews as "
Babylonia", where he became a member of
Sura Academy. Saadia, in
Sefer ha-Galui, stresses his Jewish lineage, claiming to belong to the noble family of
Shelah, son of
Judah, and counting among his ancestors
Hanina ben Dosa, the famous ascetic of the first century. Saadia expressed this claim by calling his son
Dosa; this son later served as gaon of Sura Academy from 1012–1018. Regarding Joseph, Saadia's father, a statement of the
Jewish gaon Aaron ben Meïr has been preserved saying that he was compelled to leave Egypt and died in
Jaffa, probably during Saadia's prolonged residence in the
Holy Land. The usual
nisba al-Fayyumi refers to Saadia's native place, the
Fayyum, which is located in
Middle Egypt; in Hebrew, it is often given as
Pitomi, derived from a contemporary identification of Fayum with the Biblical
Pithom, an identification found in Saadia's works. At the age of 20, Saadia began composing his first great work, the Hebrew
dictionary called the
Agron. At 23, he composed a polemic against the followers of
Anan ben David, particularly Solomon ben Yeruham, thus beginning the activity which was to prove important in opposition to
Karaite Judaism in defense of
Rabbinic Judaism. In the same year, he left Egypt and moved to
Palestine. In 921, Saadia triumphed over Gaon Aaron ben Meïr over the latter's introduction of a new
triennial cycle of Torah reading that also changed the dates of
Passover and
Rosh Hashanah. Later, one of Saadia's chief disputants was the Karaite by the name of Abu al-Surri ben Zuṭa, who is referred to by
Abraham ibn Ezra, in his commentary on
Exodus 21:24 and
Leviticus 23:15). In the year 928, at the age of thirty-six (variant: forty-six),
David ben Zakkai, the
Exilarch or head of Babylonian Jewry, petitioned Saadia to assume the honorary title of gaon, where he was appointed that same year the Gaon of Sura Academy at
Mata Mehasya, a position which he held for 14 years until his death. After only two years of teaching, Saadia recused himself from teaching because of a dispute that had fallen out between him and the Exilarch. During Saadia's absence, his post was occupied by
Joseph ben Jacob, the grandson of
Natronai ben Hilai. At length, Saadia was reconciled with the Exilarch and returned to serve in his former position, although Joseph ben Jacob also remained serving in his capacity as Gaon.
Dispute with Ben Meir In 922, six years before Saadia was appointed Gaon of Babylonia, a controversy arose concerning the
Hebrew calendar, that threatened the entire Jewish community. Since
Hillel II (around 359 CE), the calendar had been based on a series of rules (described more fully in
Maimonides' Code) rather than on observation of the
lunar phases. One of these rules required the date of
Rosh Hashanah to be postponed if the calculated
lunar conjunction occurred at noon or later. Rabbi
Aaron ben Meïr, head of the
Palestinian Gaonate (then located in
Ramla), claimed a tradition according to which the cutoff point was 642/1080 of an hour (approximately 35 minutes) after noon. In that particular year, this change would result in a two-day schism with the major Jewish communities in Babylonia: according to Ben Meir the first day of Passover would be on a Sunday, while according to the generally accepted rule it would be on Tuesday. Saadia was in
Aleppo, on his way from the East, when he learned of Ben Meïr's regulation of the Jewish calendar. Saadia addressed a warning to him, and in Mesopotamia, he placed his knowledge and pen at the disposal of the exilarch
David ben Zakkai and the scholars of the academies, adding his letters to those sent by them to the communities of the
Jewish diaspora (922). In Babylonia, he wrote his ''Sefer haMo'adim'', or "Book of
Festivals", in which he refuted the assertions of Ben Meïr regarding the calendar and helped to avert from the Jewish community the perils of schism.
Appointment as Gaon His dispute with Ben Meir was an important factor in his call to Sura in 928. The Exilarch insisted on appointing him as Gaon "head of the academy" despite the weight of precedent (no foreigner had ever served as Gaon before) and against the advice of the aged Nissim Nahrwani, a
Resh Kallah at Sura, who feared a confrontation between the two strong-willed personalities, Exilarch David and Saadia. Nissim declared, however, that if David was determined to see Saadia in the position, then he would be ready to become the first of Saadia's followers. Another factor against Saadia's appointment was his relatively undistinguished family, compared to the familial legacies of certain rabbis and their oral traditions. Under his leadership, the ancient academy of Sura founded by
Abba Arikha entered upon a new period of brilliancy. This renaissance was cut short by a clash between Saadia and David, much as Nissim had predicted. In a probate case, Saadia refused to sign a verdict of the exilarch, which he thought unjust, although the Gaon of
Pumbedita had subscribed to it. When the son of the exilarch threatened Saadia with violence to secure his compliance and was roughly handled by Saadia's servant, open war broke out between the exilarch and the gaon. Each
excommunicated the other, declaring that he deposed his opponent from office. David ben Zakkai appointed Joseph ben Jacob Gaon of Sura and Saadia conferred the exilarchate on David's brother Hasan (Josiah; 930). Hasan was forced to flee and died in exile in
Greater Khorasan, and the strife that divided Babylonian Judaism continued. Saadia was attacked by the exilarch and his chief adherent, the young but learned
Aaron ibn Sargado (later Gaon of Pumbedita, 943–960), in Hebrew pamphlets. Fragments of these pamphlets show a hatred on the part of the exilarch and his partisans that did not shrink from scandal. Saadia did not fail to reply.
Influence Saadia's influence upon the
Jews of Yemen has been exceptionally great, as many of Saadia's extant works were preserved by the community and used extensively by them. The basis for the
Yemenite tiklāl is founded upon the prayer format edited originally by Saadia. The Yemenite Jewish community also adopted thirteen penitential verse written by Saadia for
Yom Kippur, as well as the liturgical poems composed by him for
Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of
Sukkot.
Method of translation As much as Saadia's Judeo-Arabic translation of the
Torah (
Tafsīr) has brought relief and succour to Jews living in Arabic-speaking countries, his identification of places, fauna and flora, and the stones of the
priestly breastplate, has found him at variance with some scholars.
Abraham ibn Ezra, in his commentary on the Torah, wrote scathing remarks on Saadia's commentary, saying: "He doesn't have an oral tradition [...] perhaps he has a vision in a dream, while he has already erred with respect to certain places [...]; therefore, we will not rely on his dreams." However, Saadia assures his readers elsewhere that when he rendered translations for the twenty-odd
unclean fowl mentioned in the
Hebrew Bible, (
Leviticus 11:13–19;
Deuteronomy 14:12–18) his translation was based on an
oral tradition received by him. Saadia's method of conveying names for the fowls based on what he had received by way of an oral tradition prompted him to add in his defense: "Every detail about them, had one of them merely come unto us [for identification], we would not have been able to identify it for certain, much less recognize their related kinds." Scholars now ask whether Saadia applied this principle in his other translations. ''Re'em
(), as in Deuteronomy 33:17, improperly translated as "unicorn" in some English translations, is a word that is now used in Modern Hebrew to represent the "oryx". However, Saadia understood the same word to mean "rhinoceros" and writes there the Judeo-Arabic word for the creature (). He interprets the zamer'' () in
Deuteronomy 14:5 as
giraffe. In contrast to other medieval commentators, Saadia interpreted the first phrase of as a rhetorical question, so as to say, "Is the hill of God the hill of Bashan? A hunchback mountain is the hill of Bashan!" Saadia adopts in principle the method of the
Sages that even the episodic-like parts of the Bible (e.g. story of Abraham and Sarah, the selling of Joseph, etc.) that do not contain commandments have a moral lesson to tell. In some instances, Saadia's biblical translations reflect his own rationale of difficult Hebrew words based on their lexical root, and he will, at times, reject the earlier
Targum for his own understanding. For example, in Psalm 16:4, Saadia retracts from the Targum (translated): "They will multiply their goddesses (); they have hastened after some other thing; I shall not pour out their libations of blood, neither shall I take-up their names upon my lips", writing instead: "They will multiply their revenues (Judeo-Arabic: אכסאבהם); they have hastened after some other thing", etc. Even where a certain explanation is given in the
Talmud, such as the Hebrew words in Exo. 30:34 (explained in
Taanit 7a as meaning "each spice pounded separately"), Saadia deviates from the rabbinic tradition in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, in this case explaining its sense as "having them made of equal portions." In another apparent deviation from Talmudic tradition, where the Talmud (
Hullin 63a) names a biblical species of fowl (Leviticus 11:18) known as
raḥam () and says that it is the colorful
European bee-eater called the
sheraqraq, Saadia in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the
Humash writes that
raḥam is the
Egyptian vulture based on the phonetic similarity of its Arabic name with the Hebrew. The
sheraqraq () is a bird that harbingers rain in the
Levant (around October), for which reason the Talmud says: "When
raḥam arrives, mercy (
raḥamīm) comes into the world." ==Significance==