Rav Dodai bar Nachman רב דודאי בר נחמן
head of Pumbedita in the same years that Rav Yehudai led Sura
Rav Dodai bar Nachman took the headship of Pumbedita in 4521 (761) and held it about three years. The years are few, but they fell on a turning point: in those same years Rav Yehudai Gaon sat at Sura, and with him begins the genre of the finished ruling—not argument, as in the Talmud, but an answer to the question "what is to be done".
The lists of the academies' heads call Rav Dodai the brother of Rav Yehudai. There is nothing to check this against but the lists themselves, and we say exactly what they say: if the reading is right, the two academies of Babylonia were led in these years by two brothers—a rare thing in the chain of transmission.
Of Rav Dodai himself little remains: single responsa in the geonic corpus, where one sees that Pumbedita kept to its own order and was in no hurry to adopt Sura's rulings. This is not a quarrel about faith but about whose custom is older—and it runs through the whole geonic age.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the place in the list of the academy's heads and the years of the gaonate
- Geonic responsa — his responsa to the communities within the corpus of geonic responsa
Basis: documents and evidence.