רב אחא בר רב הונא

Rav Acha bar Rav Huna was an amora of the fourth generation in Bavel. In his youth he learned under Rav Sheshet, and after Rav Sheshet was niftar he learned before Rabbah together with Rav Shmuel the son of Rabbah bar bar Chana and Rav Yitzchak the son of Rav Yehuda, while keeping up an exchange with Rav Yosef, to whom he sent his questions in halacha. When Rabbah was niftar he went to learn before Rava, and the two stood to one another as rav and talmid: Rava would send him out on errands together with Rav Safra. He appears also to have served as a dayan.

One of those errands is brought in the gemara. Ifra Hormiz, the mother of King Shapur, sent Rava an offering and asked that it be brought up to Heaven, and Rava sent Rav Safra and Rav Acha bar Huna to see to it. His instructions were exact: they were to take two young idolaters of the same age, to look for ground that the sea had newly thrown up as silt, never yet put to any human use and so fit to serve as a mizbe’ach, to bring wood that no man had used and that could not be counted as broken vessels, to strike fire from stones, and to bring the offering there for the sake of Heaven.

His name appears outside the gemara as well. In those centuries it was the practice in the lands of Bavel to keep inscribed clay bowls in the house, whose words were held to drive off mazikim, and one such bowl that has survived names Rav Acha bar Huna as a neighbor of the household that kept it.