The Mourners of Zion: Karaites settle in Jerusalem

The Karaite schism stands here at 4527. What came next is usually not told at all, and what came next was this.

The movement that had rejected the Oral Torah acquired within two generations what it had at first lacked: a code and rules of inquiry. Benjamin Nahawandi in Persia supplied them—a Karaite historian placed him above Anan himself. But something else came with that: Nahawandi left each man to decide for himself whether to accept the rabbinic ordinances, and held that a student may differ from his teacher. A movement with no common tradition began to divide within itself—and has divided ever since.

From the end of the ninth century the Karaites moved to Jerusalem. The first of weight was Daniel al-Qumisi of Damghan: he came about 875 and proposed the arrangement on which the community rested—the diaspora collects money, and in the city chosen men live on behalf of all. He too disputed with Anan, and said that 'those who come after will find the truth', applying it to himself as well.

They lived in the quarter called sela' ha-elef; the congregation was called the Community of Lilies. They ate no meat and drank no wine, wore sackcloth and kept apart—holding that by this they hastened the redemption. Jerusalem became thereby a centre of Karaite writing for two centuries.

It ended all at once. The Seljuk conquest of the 1070s broke the community, and the First Crusade destroyed it: in 1099 some were taken captive and some burned in a synagogue. The survivors went to Byzantium—and Karaism moved its centre there.

In 1099 the Crusaders did not distinguish Karaite from Rabbanite.