Bustanai and the restoration of the exilarchate under the caliph

The Resh Galuta—Head of the Exile—was the temporal authority of Babylonian Jewry and traced his house to David. The Persian persecutions of the sixth century beheaded the office: the exilarch Mar Zutra was executed and the succession broke.

With the coming of the Arabs it was restored. Tradition names Bustanai ben Haninai as the first exilarch of the new age and tells a story historians will not vouch for: the caliph, warned in a dream, sought out a surviving boy of David's line and gave him the daughter of the deposed Persian king to wife. Because of that story Bustanai's descendants litigated for centuries over the legitimacy of their claims.

The arrangement that followed lasted into the eleventh century: the exilarch held temporal power, collected taxes, appointed judges and represented the Jews before the caliph; the Geonim of Sura and Pumbedita held learned authority and answered questions from the whole dispersion. Relations between them could be hostile, and in 925 the quarrel of the exilarch David ben Zakkai with Rav Saadya Gaon split Babylonian Jewry for years.

Benjamin of Tudela, who reached Baghdad about 1170, still found the exilarch in honour; soon afterwards the office died away.