Person
Mar Rav Yosef bar Abba מר רב יוסף בר אבא
head of Pumbedita from 4574
Mar Rav Yosef bar Abba took Pumbedita in 4574 (814). The name stands twice in the list of Pumbedita: a second Rav Yosef bar Abba takes the same seat twenty-five years later, in 4599 (839). They are two different men, and we do not merge them.
Of the first of the two nothing is known beyond the year: no responsum, no account. That is what makes them hard to tell apart—and they must be told apart.
On the timeline
4510 · 750 CEThe Flowering of the Geonic Age and the Sheiltot of Rav Achai4510 · 750 CEThe first books after the Talmud
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the list of the academy's heads by name and year
- Seder Tannaim ve-Amoraim — a list put together about 884—within this very century, the testimony of a contemporary rather than a retelling of Sherira
Basis: documents and evidence.