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. Hezekiah was elected to the office of principal after the murder of Hai Gaon, but was denounced to a fanatical government of the Buyyids, who then imprisoned and tortured him to death. With him ended his family with the exception of two sons, who escaped to the Iberian Peninsula, where they found a home with Joseph ben Samuel ha-Nagid, the son of Samuel ha-Nagid.

The death of Hezekiah ended the line of the Gaonim, which had begun four centuries earlier (see Hanan of Iskiya), and with it the Academy of Pumbedita. 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: