As the oldest organized religion in Sassanian Iraq, Judaism serves as a kind of model for other religious organizations in the region. After considering the growth of Judaism in Iraq during the Sassanian period, Morony notes the connections between the Jewish and Aramaean populations as well as the intermixed ethnic communities in which Jews played a part. The socio-economic life, the formation of the Rabbinic community, contrasts with the Magians cover many of the social issues. Government among the Jewish exiles, as reflected in the exilarch and autonomous legal jurisdiction occupies a substantial portion of the study. The rise of rabbinic authority and the establishment of the gaonate were results of this trajectory. Messianic expectations as they continued to develop in the Jewish community in diaspora round out this discussion of Judaism as a fully developed religion in Iraq under Islamic rule. Extracted from Michael G. Morony’s Iraq After the Muslim Conquest this brief study provides the basis for starting to understand the complex world of Judaism in early Islamic Iraq.

Michael G. Morony teaches in the History Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley and earned his Ph.D. at UCLA. He has written several books on West Asian social and economic history.