Hezekiah Gaon

Hezekiah Gaon (or Hezekiah ben David; Hebrew: חזקיה בן דוד‎‎, or Hezekiah b. David) was the last Gaon of the Talmudic academy in Pumbedita from 1038-40.

Hezekiah ben David was a member of the exilarchal family; his father David was the son of Zakkai, who was the son of Avraham, who was the son of Nathan, son of Rabbi David, whose father was Hazub.^[1] Hezekiah was elected to the office of principal after the death of Hai Gaon at the age of 99, but was denounced to a fanatical government of the Buyid dynasty, who then imprisoned and tortured him to death. However, the Jewish Quarterly Review mentions that Hezekiah was liberated from prison, and became head of the academy, and is mentioned as such by a contemporary in 1046.^[2] With him ended his family except two sons who escaped to the Iberian Peninsula, where they found a home with Joseph ben Samuel, son of Samuel ibn Naghrillah.

The death of Hezekiah ended the line of the Geonim, which had begun four centuries earlier (see Hanan of Iskiya), and with it, Pumbedita Academy. The Spanish poet, Hiyya al-Daudi (d. 1154), ancestor of the Ibn Yahya family, descended from David ben Hezekiah, who had escaped the Buyyids with his brother.

Bibliography

• Rabad, Sefer ha-Kabbalah;
• Zacuto, The book of Lineage;
• Gans, Ẓemaḥ Dawid, i.;
• Grätz, Gesch. v. 428;
• Jost, Gesch. der Juden und Seiner Sekten, ii. 287.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Hezekiah (Gaon)". Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company.