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Sherira bar Hanina more commonly known as Sherira Gaon was the gaon of the Academy of Pumbeditha. He was one of the most prominent Geonim of his period, and the father of Hai Gaon, who succeeded him as Gaon. He wrote the Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon, a comprehensive history of the composition of the Talmud.
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Sefer ha-Qabbalah was a book written by Abraham ibn Daud around 1160–1161. The book is a response to Karaitic attacks against the historical legitimacy of Rabbinic Judaism, and contains, among other items, the controversial tale of the kidnapping by pirates of four great rabbinic scholars from Babylonian academies, whose subsequent ransoming by Jewish communities around the Mediterranean accounts for the transmission of scholarly legitimacy to the rabbis of Jewish centers in North Africa and Spain. In terms of chronology, Sefer ha-Qabbalah continues where the Iggeret of Rabbi Sherira Gaon leaves off, adding invaluable historical anecdotes not found elsewhere. The Sefer ha-Qabbalah puts the compilation of the Mishnah by Rabbi Judah HaNasi in year 500 of the Seleucid Era.
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Iggeret of Rabbi Sherira Gaon, also known as the Letter of Rav Sherira Gaon, and the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon, is a responsum penned in the late 10th century in the Pumbedita Academy by Sherira Gaon, the Chief Rabbi and scholar of Babylonian Jewry, to Rabbi Jacob ben Nissim of Kairouan, in which he methodologically details the development of rabbinic literature, bringing down a chronological list of the Sages of Israel from the time of the compilation of the Mishnah, to the subsequent rabbinic works, spanning the period of the Tannaim, Amoraim, Savoraim, and Geonim under the Babylonian Exilarchs, concluding with his own time. Therein, Sherira Gaon outlines the development of the Talmud, how it was used, its hermeneutic principles, and how its lessons are to be applied in daily life whenever one rabbinic source contradicts another rabbinic source. It is considered one of the classics in Jewish historiography.
References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Wilhelm Bacher and M. Seligsohn (1901–1906). "Shemariah ben Elhanan". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia . New York: Funk & Wagnalls.Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography: Besides the sources mentioned, Grätz, Gesch. v., note 21, ii.; Harkavy, Teshubot ha-Ge'onim, p. 2.
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