Pumbedita (sometimes Pumbeditha, Pumpedita, or Pumbedisa;
Imperial Aramaic: פוּמְבְּדִיתָאPūmbəḏīṯāʾ, "The Mouth of the River,"[1]) was an ancient city located near the modern-day city of
Fallujah,
Iraq. It is known for having hosted the
Pumbedita Academy.
History
The city of Pumbedita was said to have possessed a Jewish population since the days of
Second Temple of Jerusalem.[2]
The city had a large
Jewish population and was famed for its
Pumbedita Academy - whose scholarship, together with the city of
Sura, gave rise to the
Babylonian Talmud. The academy there was founded by
Judah ben Ezekiel in the late third century.
The academy was established after the destruction of the academy of
Nehardea. Nehardea, being the capital city, was destroyed during the
Persian-Palmyrian war.
The twelfth-century travel account of
Benjamin of Tudela gives this description :
Two days [from
Mosul is] Juba, which is Pumbeditha in
Neharde’a, containing about two thousand Jews, some of them being eminent scholars. Rabbi R. Chen, R. Moshe and R. Eliakim are the principal of them. Here the traveller may see the sepulchres of R. Jehuda and R. Sh'muel opposite to two synagogues - which they erected during their lives - and the sepulchre of R. Bosthenai, the
prince of the captivity, of R. Nathan and R. Nachman B. Papa.[3]
The Nahr-al-Badāt (or Budāt) was a long drainage channel taken from the left bank of the Kūfah arm of the Euphrates, at a
day's journey to the north of Kūfah city, probably near the town of Kanṭarah-al-Kūfah, otherwise called Al-Kanāṭīr, ‘the Bridges,’ which doubtless carried the high road across the Badāt. This city of ‘the Bridges’ lay 27 miles south of the great Sūrā bridge of boats, and 28 miles north of Kūfah; and it probably lay adjacent to, or possibly was identical with, the Hebrew Pombedita (Arabic Fam-al-Badāt, ‘mouth of the Badāt canal’)”, mentioned by Benjamin of Tudela as a great centre of Jewish learning in Babylonia.[4]
^A
Geonic Commentary on a passage taken from the
Babylonian Talmud (Kiddushin 72a-b) and discovered in the
Cairo Geniza reads: "...Thus do we say, Baḏitha levaī (i.e. the river is teeming), everyone comes in and takes out fish. When a great number starts to come inside, they are trapped and brought out from there. Now, this matter takes place on the intermediate days of the feast. As for Baḏitha, it [means] river, while its mouth is called Fūm Baḏitha (Pumbeditha). Now, however, in the Arabian tongue it is called Al-Badeāh (al-Badiya)."