RAḤBAH, AL-

RAḤBAH, AL-, town situated on the W. bank of the Euphrates, S. of Kirkisiya. Founded in the first third of the ninth century by Mālik ibn Ṭauq, al-Raḥbah was named Raḥbat Mālik ibn Ṭauq to differentiate it from other towns bearing the name Al-Raḥbah. Onkelos, and after him R. saadiah Gaon, identify the town with the biblical Rehoboth by the River (Gen. 36:37), while the Arab geographer Yāqūt reports an ancient tradition, according to which Al-Raḥbah was founded by Namrūd (Nimrod) b. Kūsh. It was, at any rate, one of the large cities on the Euphrates – as confirmed by another Arab geographer, al-Mukaddasī, writing at the end of the tenth century – and it had a large Jewish community. Obadiah the proselyte was   in this town at the beginning of the 12th century. benjamin of Tudela, the 12th-century traveler, found a Jewish community of 2,000 there. In a letter (iggeret) written by R. samuel b. ali , head of the baghdad academy, in 1191, Al-Raḥbah heads the list of the communities of northern babylonia and syria . There were also karaites living in the town, as is known from a list appearing at the end of a manuscript of Japheth b. Ali's commentary on Numbers, dedicated by Moses b. Japheth al-Raḥbī to the Karaite community in jerusalem . By the 14th century the ancient town had been destroyed and its site had been moved further to the west. At the time that the town was included within the mamluk kingdom, Jews still lived there, as may be inferred from an inscription found in the synagogue of Tadef (a village near aleppo ), dating apparently from about 1400, which mentions the name "Obadiah b. Moses … b. Abraham al-Raḥbī." During Ottoman rule Jews from al-Raḥbah moved to india , and some of them (e.g., a prominent family that lived in Cochin in the 18th century), bore the name of their ancient home. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-Buldān S.V.; J. Obermeyer, Die Landschaft Babylonien (1929), 36f; Mann, Texts, 2 (1935), 28f; Ashtor, Toledot, 1 (1944), 278; 2 (1951), 120; S.D. Goitein, in: JJS, 4 (1953), 83; A. Ben-Jacob, Yehudei Bavel (1965), 56. (Eliyahu Ashtor)