שמואל בן עלי

Rav Shmuel ben Ali HaLevi Gaon (niftar c. 4958/1198), known also as Ibn al-Dastur, was the gaon of Baghdad — head of Yeshivat Gaon Yaakov and the leading Torah authority of Bavel in the twelfth century, the one chacham of his era in Bavel whose writings survive in any number. A Levi whose family traced its descent to Moshe Rabbeinu, he arose some 120 years after the petirah of Rav Hai Gaon had seemed to close the era of the geonim, and labored to restore the ancient crown of Bavel. His father Ali had headed the yeshiva but was niftar while Shmuel was still young; Rav Shmuel received his appointment as gaon from Rav Shlomo, who had held the post in the interim.

He stood at the head of Yeshivat Gaon Yaakov for close to thirty years — a yeshiva of two thousand talmidim, of which the other yeshivot of Bavel were like branches. He appointed dayanim throughout Bavel, Persia, and Syria, sat at the head of a beit din in which nine more of the great talmidei chachamim of Baghdad served, and held formal authority from the caliph al-Nasir, representing the Jews before the crown. After the petirah of the Rosh Galuta Daniel ben Chisdai he took that office as well, conducting himself with the royal state of the princes of the East — sixty attendants about him, robes of gold and purple, a meturgeman repeating his words to the assembled — as the traveler Rav Petachiah of Regensburg describes. Torah and greatness were joined in him: alongside all this he answered she’eilot in halachah from rabbanim across the world, from Rav Moshe of Kiev to Rav Zecharyah ben Berachel of Aleppo, and a collection of his igrot, recovered from the Cairo Genizah, was gathered and published in our era.

He is known for his exchanges with the Rambam — a machloket between gedolim over halachah and emunah: whether one may travel by boat on the rivers of Bavel on Shabbat, and above all the sugya of techiyat hameitim, in which the challenge of Rav Shmuel and his circle moved the Rambam to write the Igeret Techiyat HaMeitim. Beneath the individual questions stood the standing of the yeshivot of Bavel themselves — whether the far-flung kehillot, which had raised up gedolim of their own, remained bound to the geonim of Bavel as of old.

Rav Shmuel had no sons. His daughter, famed as the Bat HaLevi for her expertise in Talmud, taught talmidim who listened from outside while she remained unseen within; and his place as gaon passed to his son-in-law, Rav Zecharyah ben Berachel.