Mar Rav Huna Mari bar Yosef רב הונא מרי בר מר יוסף
head of Pumbedita around 4449
Mar Rav Huna Mari bar Yosef headed Pumbedita around 4449. Sherira gives this year without the "about" that hedges the rest of this stretch, which makes it the firmest point in the whole span between Bustanai and Anan ben David.
No writings, no responsa, no accounts of him remain. He is known to have been the son of Mar Yosef—the patronymic is in the list, and that too is part of the testimony: the heads of the academies are set down not as a row of titles but as men, each with a father and a place in the succession.
Such names matter more than they seem to. While they are named, the chain is unbroken: between the sealing of the Talmud and the first books of the Geonim lie centuries about which what we know first of all is that in those years the learning was being handed to someone.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the list of the heads of Pumbedita by name and year
- Seder Tannaim ve-Amoraim — the list of the Savoraim and the first heads of the academies, put together about a century before the Epistle: the same chain, attested independently of Sherira
Basis: documents and evidence.