The Days of Awe: Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish knowledge of Time – Part Five
The Jewish Exilarchs
ruling in Baghdad in the Days of Islamic Rule
The Jewish people had already experienced Egyptian culture with their Pantheon of animal gods in which they gave their allegiance to instead of the G-d of Creation. The Royal Davidian descendants of the lineage of Kings David and Solomon would have their day to rule and worship the G-d of Israel, but instead, they began also to worship the gods of wood and stone. First came the imperial terrorists, the Assyrians, who terrorized the people in Jerusalem in the days of King Hezekiah, but instead, the Creator of all Nature sent a billion volt blast from the sky and vaporized the entire army of Sennacherib just outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Later, the Assyrians returned again, but this time they did not come as terrorists and exile the Jews like they did the Northern Kingdom of Israel, but instead they came to give King Manasseh a mind-altering experience, for he was a more brutal terrorist to his people then they and they were appalled at his royal conduct. So Esarhaddon returned and took King Manasseh in chains. There in isolation, he turned his heart to the L-rd and was restored back to the throne of King David and Solomon.
Later, the Jewish people would again rebel in spite of the pleading of the Prophet Jeremiah, and King Nebuchadnezzar took the entire kingdom into exile in Babylon. There in the region of Babylon and ancient Baghdad the royal heirs to the throne of King David were called Nasis (Princes of David) and Exilarchs (Royal Davidian rulers in exile). This was the unofficial title given to the leader of the Jews of the Babylonian diaspora during the later Persian Parthian and Sassanid periods.
The Exilarchs represented the Jewish communities first to the Babylonian imperial rulers before the emperors of Persia toppled the impregnable Babylon. In fact it was the Nasi, and Exilarch Zerubabbel who would become the Governor for the Persian Shah when Cyrus the Great gave the royal decree to free all the Jews to return home, even though only thousands of Jews returned back to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem. There they began again to establish a Jewish society and culture.
To the land of Israel, Prince Zerubabbel would bring great leadership in the reestablishment of the Jewish social culture. He also set the foundation for the rebuilding of the House of G-d that became known as the Temple of Zerubabbel. He also brought with him his three wives;
- Zerubabbel’s 1st wife was the Babylonian Princess Amytis, the daughter of Babylonian Emperor Evil-Merodach by his marriage to his half sister, Princess Nitocris, the daughter of King Nebuchadnezzar.
- Zerubabbel’s 2nd wife was the Persian Princess Rhodah, the sister to wife, that gave the Jewish-Persian Abuidite Lineage;
- 3rd Jewish Princess Davidian wife, Esthra, who as Zerubabbel’s cousin, was the daughter of Pedaiah, Zerubabbel’s father, Shealtiel’s brother.
As BibleSearchers Reflections the three marriages of Zerubabbel and their implications upon his life, we read in the sub-titled article titled;
As BibleSearchers Reflections the three marriages of Zerubabbel and their implications upon his life, we read in the sub-titled article titled; “Chronology of the Jewish Exile”:
BibleSearchers Reflections – “When Ezra the Scribe arrived in the land of Judah within months after the building of the temple of Zerubabbel, he reaffirmed an old Torah provision that the Jewish people were to be a “separated people”; religiously, spiritually, socially, politically, and physically. They were to be servants of the Most High G-d.
The impact upon their social culture was that their inter-marriage and inter-relationships with the nations that surrounded them must cease. They would have to start anew, but the results would be catastrophic to those who had formed physical and emotional bonds with families of people who did not live and follow, much less understand or care about the commands of their G-d, that was given to them at Sinai.
The affect upon the royal family of Prince Zerubabbel was equally catastrophic. He had to divorce his 1st Babylonian bride, Amytis that he grew up with as a young man. Together, their families, the royal family of King Jeconiah, and the royal family of King Evil-Merodach shared the closeness of their royal fathers’ relationships. Both of the ancestral fathers were dead. The entire social culture of Babylon was gone and absorbed into the Media-Persian culture. The effects of this divorce were not known, Prince Shazrezzar did remain with his father in Jerusalem.
The affects of the divorce with his 2nd Persian bride, Rhodah, was more problematic. It appears that Princess Rhodah was the same person as Rhodogune, the sister to Cyrus the Great. According to Persian history, Rhodogune was the mother of the current Persian Shah, which made Shah Darius the brother-in-law to Prince Zerubabbel. Returning his wife back to Persia, disgraced with a divorce, was potentially an international relations earthquake. It may have even cost the life of the Jewish Governor Zerubabbel.
The effect of the Torah rulings of Ezra the Scribe completely shifted the preeminence of the status of supremacy of the sons, and descendants of Zerubabbel. Whereas the first son of the ruler was the crown prince and heir to the throne, the family ascendency turned upside down. The descendants of the 3rd Jewish bride, Esthra, now became the senior lineage of royal heirs.
The two oldest sons, one half-Babylonian and the other half-Persian were demoted and their descendants recognized as “bastard” lineages for the next three hundred and thirty years. The day did come when the G-d of Israel allowed all the senior royal lineages of pure Jewish descent to become extinct. A new era had now begun, but the effects of the Ezra Torah rulings would affect the Jewish people for the next two thousand years.”
Zerubabbel disappeared into history, but the role of the Exilarchs in Babylon continued until the 15th century CE. Their civil hereditary role and function was to collect Jewish taxes. It was the power of making the appointments of the leading rabbis and leaders of the Jewish communities that kept the Exilarchs rule intact while preserving the national character if the Jewish people intact as they were living in wilderness of exile under Islamic rule for 1260 years. Out of the exilarch’s office came also the appointments of the leading rabbis and leaders of Jewish communities remaining behind in Babylon.
The exilarchate rose to fame during the rise of Islam and according to the Jewish history, the Exilarchs yearly held audience with the Islamic rulers and also held court seeing audience of the local Jewish population and the visiting dignitaries from around the world in the 7th-8th centuries CE. As Islam disintegrated, so did the authority of the Exilarch, which is probably last heard of in the 14th century.
Many Jewish exilarchs and scholars remained behind in Baghdad after Prince Zerubabbel took thousands of the Jews back home in aliyah after the 70 years of Babylonian exile. This exile ended with the decree of the Persian Shah Cyrus the Great that the Jewish people could go home, rebuild their land, their capital city and their temple. With these Babylonian Jewish leaders included the remainder of the Jewish people who “stayed behind” in Baghdad began to set up their future life and identity.
These Jewish sages had significant access to the cultural and historical treasures of the Second Sassanid Persian Empire that were transferred from the eldest Princess daughter of the last Persian Shah Yazdgerd III, called Princess Shahr Banu. With the final destruction of the Persian Empire and the rise of the Islamic Caliphates, it was the Persian princess, Shahr Bahu who became the transitional person and carried the royal legacy of the Persians into the future Islamic caliphates.
Shahr Banu married Husayn ibn Alī, the son of the 1st Shi’ite Imam, Alī ibn Abī Tālib who was the cousin to the Prophet Mohammed and married Fatima Zahra the daughter of Mohammed. Shahr Banu’s husband Husayn ibn Alī, was recognized by both the Sunnis and the Shi’ites as the third Imam of Shi’a Islam’s “Rightly Guided Imams”. It was their son, Ali ibn Husayn who became the fourth Imam of Shi’a Islam. Why are these historical events important?
At this same time as the reigns of the 1st Islamic Shi’ite rose to prominence, the Exilarchs or the Princes of the Royal lineages of Kings David and Solomon were residing in Baghdad. The Jewish Baghdad ruler of that era was called Bostonai (Bustanai) was recognized as the first Exilarch after the Islam-Arabic conquest of 642 CE. Bostonai was appointed to that position by the Islamic Imam Husayn ibn Ali, the husband to the Persian Princes Shahr Banu and the son of the Islamic Caliph Ali.
The Jewish Exilarch, Bostonai, married first to an Arabic - Jewish princess called Adoa, one of the sisters of Fatima Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammad. Bostonai’s Jewish Princess wife, Adoa was the daughter of a Quraysh chief Assad Ibn Hashim, an Arabic sheikh of the family of the Prophet Muhammad by his Jewish wife, Princess Zahna who was the daughter of the Babylonian 34th Jewish Exilarch called Mar-Zutra III (Akhtab).
Exilarch Mar-Zutra III had recently been executed and the exilarchate went into an interregnum (vacancy) for twenty five years between the years of 589-614 CE. It is of interest that Bostonai’s wife, Adoa’s mother, Princess Zahna married Abd Manaf and together they became the parents of the 4th Sunni Caliph and the 1st Shi’ite Imam, Alī ibn Abī Tālib, making Imam Ali a cousin to the Prophet Mohammad.
If the royal interrelations were not close enough between the Jewish Davidian Exilarchs in Baghdad, the Jewish Exilarch who was the predecessor to Bostonai, Exilarch Mar-Zutra III had two children. His Jewish daughter, Zahna, as noted above, became the mother of Alī ibn Abī Tālib, the 4th Sunni Caliph and the 1st Shi’ite Imam and earned her fame in Shi’ite traditions. Princess Zahna had an older Jewish brother, Prince Yahya, who became the father of Davidian Princess Safiya.
This Jewish Davidian Princess daughter, Safiya became the ninth wife of Mohammad, the “Prophet of Islam”. “The Prophet” was her 3rd husband for she was the widow of the Jewish Exilarch Kahane (Kinana ibn al-Rabi) who was the son of Al-Rabbi (Ar-Rabī' bin Abī 'l-Huqayq), a famous Jewish poet who lived near Medina just before the Hegira (622 CE) in the Jewish tribe called the Banu al-Nadir.
With the opposition to the Jewish tribes by the Prophet just prior to the Hejira, the Jewish brothers in laws of Princess Safiya’s husband, Al-Rabi ibn al-Rabi; Kinana ibn al-Rabi and Sallam ibn al-Rabi became some of Muhammad's most bitter enemies and Princess Safiya may have become a hostage bride of “The Prophet”.
When the Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem under the Governorship of Zerubabbel, Ezra the Scribe and the Jewish clerics issued a decree in Jerusalem that “to be a Jew you mother must be a Jew”. This made the descendants of Bostonai, now the official Exilarch of Baghdad nine hundred years later, officially Jews even though their ancient maternal grandfather was a descendant of the family of the Prophet Muhammad. Such was the close relationship between the Jewish and Islamic rulers during the beginning years of Islamic Caliphate rule.
Bostonai’s second wife was Princess Dara (-Izdadwar) who was called Princess Izdundad. She was the younger sister to Shahr Banu and the daughter of King Yazdegerd III, the last Sassanid Shah of the Second Persian Empire.
Here we have one of the wife’s of the most prominent world Jewish political leader who as a Prince of the royal lineage of Kings David and Solomon was the royal “king in exile” in the city of Baghdad married to the daughter of the last king of the Persian Second Empire. He was intimately associated with the last of the Persian royalty and thereby had access to all of the Persian royal records. Bostonai was also intimately involved with the Islamic Imams who were direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
With these vital political connections, the Jewish sages of Baghdad and rabbinic yeshivas at Sura and Pumbeditha located in the ancient Babylonian region had historical access par-excellence to the historical archives of the Assyrians whom the Babylonians toppled, the Babylonian Empire whom the Medes and the Persians toppled, the Persian Empires whom the Islamic Caliphs and Imams toppled and assimilated with the descendants of Mohammed the Prophet.
As such, these two Jewish institutions of higher learning at Sura and Pumbeditha located in the ancient Babylonian region, became the nurturing round for the preservation of the Torah, the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud and the educational centers for a majority of the Jewish rabbis and scholars for the next twelve hundred and sixty years (1260 years).
You might be Interested to Read the Rest of the Series:
“The Fall Festivals of the Jews: Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish knowledge of Time”
Part One – “The Days of Awe - How the Ancients Recorded Time”
Part Two – “The Apostate Lost Israelite’s influence on Roman Christian Historical Postscripts of Historical Dating of Time”
Part Three – “The Jewish Calendar of History began not in Egypt but at Creation”
Part Four – “The Jewish New Year on the 1st of Tishri”
Part Five – “The Jewish Babylonian Exilarchs and their Intimate Access to Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Islamic Imperial History”
Part Six – “The Unprecedented Access of Jewish Sages to the Alexandrian Library Historical Archives”
Part Seven – “The Jewish Fate in the Roman Annals of Ancient History”
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The legitimacy of the Jewish people and their relevancy to give us a vignette of history from the Egyptian Empire in the days of Jacob and Joseph to today is summed up in one thought; they were there when every empire of the world made their bid to be the rulers of the world. They all disappeared and today once again are reasserting their rights to rule the global “New World Order”. Yet, the G-d of Israel has proclaimed that in the end, they all will disappear and Messianic Age of the Messiah in Jerusalem will rule the whole world.
As we have seen the world is quickly polarizing between “The Jews” and the “Nations of the World”. In the end that will be only two choices; we are either for the Hebrew Israelites; both now part of the Jews of the house of Judah and the Lost Israelites of the house of Israel or we will be against them. This comes to one sobering conclusion, if you are a descendant of the Lost Ten Tribes of the House of Israel and you despise your brothers, the Jews, you will be left cohabitating with peoples who will have a genetic hatred to you even though you think you want to be a part of them.
So today, the G-d is whistling you to come back to the brotherhood of Klal Yisra’el (All Israel). To learn more about this redemptive process, you are Welcome to Contact “Kol Ha Tor”, the Voice of the Turtledove. Here is a joint Orthodox Jewish and 10-Triber Mission to bring awareness of the imminent fulfillment of the Biblical Prophecies regarding the Redemption of all Israel (12 Tribes Re-conciled and Re-United). This super Event of all Times will entail establishing in the region of Shomron (the Ancient Bible Heartland of the Patriarchs) and the Judean Wilderness into a new homeland for the Return of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel when All Israel will finally be redeemed.
For inquiries about Kol Ha Tor Vision for the Lost Tribes of Israel, Visit – “Shomron Lives!”, a Spiritual Retreat and Guest House in Samaria, that hosts Shomron (Samaria) Tours to reacquaint the Returning Lost Tribers of the House of Israel.