Hezekiah, or Ezekias, was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the son of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah.
The exilarch was the leader of the Jewish community in Persian Mesopotamia during the era of the Parthians, Sasanians and Abbasid Caliphate up until the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, with intermittent gaps due to ongoing political developments. The exilarch was universally regarded by the Jewish community as the royal heir of the House of David and held a place of prominence as both a rabbinical authority and as a noble within the Persian court. Within the Sasanian Empire, the exilarch was the political equivalent of the Catholicos of the Christian Church of the East, and was thus responsible for community-specific organizational tasks such as running the rabbinical courts, collecting taxes from Jewish communities, supervising and providing financing for the Talmudic academies in Babylonia, and the charitable re-distribution and financial assistance to needy members of the exile community. The position of exilarch was hereditary, held in continuity by a family that traced its patrilineal descent from antiquity stemming from king David.
Crescas is a Judaeo-Catalan family name, prominent in the former Crown of Aragon. Crescas is a common name among Jews of southern France and Catalonia. There have been a number of scholars and rabbis sharing that surname, including:
The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, intermittently, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.
Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas was a Spanish-Jewish philosopher and a renowned halakhist. Along with Maimonides ("Rambam"), Gersonides ("Ralbag"), and Joseph Albo, he is known as one of the major practitioners of the rationalist approach to Jewish philosophy.
Dunash ha-Levi ben Labrat was a medieval Jewish commentator, poet, and grammarian of the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. He is known for his philological commentary, Teshuvot Dunash, and for his liturgical poems D'ror Yiqra and D'vai Haser.
The Davidic line or House of David refers to the lineage of the Israelite king David through texts in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and through the succeeding centuries. In Judaism and Christianity, it is the bloodline from which the Hebrew Messiah has a patrilineal descent. The Christian gospels claim that Jesus descends from the Davidic line and is therefore the legitimate Hebrew Messiah. The New Testament books of Matthew and Luke give two different accounts of the genealogy of Jesus that trace back to David.
Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, also known as Isaac Israeli the Elder and Isaac Judaeus, was one of the foremost Jewish physicians and philosophers living in the Arab world of his time. He is regarded as the father of medieval Jewish Neoplatonism. His works, all written in Arabic and subsequently translated into Hebrew, Latin and Spanish, entered the medical curriculum of the early thirteenth-century universities in Medieval Europe and remained popular throughout the Middle Ages.
Hasdai ibn Shaprut born about 915 at Jaén, Spain; died about 970 at Córdoba, Andalusia, was a Jewish scholar, physician, diplomat, and patron of science.
The Khazar Correspondence is a set of documents, which are alleged to date from the 950s or 960s, and to be letters between Hasdai ibn Shaprut, foreign secretary to the Caliph of Cordoba, and Joseph Khagan of the Khazars. The Correspondence is one of only a few documents attributed to a Khazar author, and potentially one of only a small number of primary sources on Khazar history.
Bostanai, also transliterated as Bustenai or Bustnay, was the first Exilarch under Arab rule. He lived in the early-to-middle of the 7th century, and died about 660 AD. The name is Aramaized from the Persian bustan or bostan, meaning "Garden". Bostanai is the only Dark Age Babylonian Exilarch of whom anything more than a footnote is known. He is frequently made the subject of Jewish legends.
The Benveniste family is an old, noble, wealthy, and scholarly Jewish family of Narbonne, France and northern Spain established in the 11th century. The family was present in the 11th to the 15th centuries in Hachmei Provence, France, Barcelona, Aragon and Castile Spain.
Menahem ben Saruq was a Spanish-Jewish philologist of the tenth century CE. He was a skilled poet and polyglot. He was born in Tortosa around 920 and died around 970 in Cordoba. Menahem produced an early dictionary of the Hebrew language. For a time he was the assistant of the great Jewish statesman Hasdai ibn Shaprut, and was involved in both literary and diplomatic matters; his dispute with Dunash ben Labrat, however, led to his downfall.
Hezekiah ben Solomon was the son of Solomon ben David and thus was the eighth Karaite exilarch of the line of Anan ben David. He lived in Iraq during the eleventh century. He was the father of Hasdai ben Hezekiah.
Hasdai ben Hezekiah was the son of Hezekiah ben Solomon and thus was the ninth Karaite exilarch of the line of Anan ben David. He lived in Iraq during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He was the father of Solomon ben Hasdai.
Solomon ben Hasdai was the son of Hasdai ben Hezekiah. He was the tenth Karaite exilarch of the house of Anan ben David, and the last of Anan's descendants to be regarded by the Karaites as their nasi. During his reign many Karaite communities were destroyed by the Seljuks and Karaism as a rival to rabbinical Judaism declined sharply.
Manasses or Manasseh is a biblical Hebrew name for men. It is the given name of seven people of the Bible, the name of a tribe of Israel, and the name of one of the apocryphal writings. The name is also used in the modern world.
Solomon the Exilarch ruled the Diaspora Jewish community as Exilarch from 730 to 761. He was the son of the exilarch Hasdai I. In consequence of a dearth of teachers, he found it necessary to install as head of the Academy of Sura a scholar from Pumbedita, though this was contrary to traditional usage. According to Grätz, this scholar was Mar ben Samuel; according to Weiss, Mar Rab Judah ben Rab Naḥman. In the genealogical claim of Anan ben David, the founder of the Karaite sect, Solomon is omitted.
Menahem or Menachem was a Jewish king.
