Sura סורא
The academy founded by Rav, where Rav Ashi began the editing of the Babylonian Talmud.
Sura was founded in 3979 by Rav—Abba Aricha, a disciple of Rabbi Yehuda haNasi who returned from the Land of Israel to Babylonia. He chose a town where Torah was barely studied and made it a centre: tradition speaks of twelve thousand at his lectures, and of the kalla months of Adar and Elul, when field work stopped and thousands came from across the country.
A century and a half later Rav Ashi spent sixty years here putting the accumulated material in order, going through the entire corpus twice—the beginning of the Babylonian Talmud's redaction, completed under Ravina around 4260.
In the geonic age Sura was the first academy of the diaspora; in 4688 Rav Saadya Gaon was brought from Egypt to head it, bringing translation, philosophy, grammar and a prayer book into Jewish learning.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Chullin 110a — the customs of study at Sura
- Bava Batra 22a — Rav and the founding of the academy
- Bava Metzia 86a — Rav Ashi — “the end of instruction”
Rishonim
- the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the chronicle of the heads of Sura
Basis: tradition.