Person
Mar Rav Nehilai of Naresh מר רב נהילאי מנרש
head of Sura from 4457, from Naresh
Mar Rav Nehilai took the headship of Sura in 4457 (697) and held it about eighteen years—long, by the measure of this list.
He is named for Naresh, and the name is worth pausing on. Naresh is the town where Rav Papa, an Amora of the fourth generation, founded his academy; the Talmud speaks of it. Three centuries later a head of Sura comes out of the same place. The academies of Babylonia rested not on two great names alone: around them stood a network of towns where men taught and out of which they came.
Of the man himself, nothing: no responsum, no incident. What remains is a name, the years, and the town he came from.
On the timeline
4349 · 589 CEThe Beginning of the Geonic Era4510 · 750 CEThe Flowering of the Geonic Age and the Sheiltot of Rav Achai
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the list of the heads of Sura 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.