RAQQA

RAQQA (al-), city on the Euphrates in N.E. Syria, founded in 722 by the abbasid caliph al-Manṣūr. The Jews identified al-Raqqa with the Calneh of Genesis 10:10. According to the Arab geographer al-Muqaddasī (late 10th century) the city was an important commercial center during his lifetime. Throughout the period of caliphal rule there was a large Jewish community in al-Raqqa and its environs. The philosopher david al-mukammis was from this city. An 11th-century letter from a ḥaver (rabbi) to a rosh yeshivah in jerusalem is extant which states that he will go to Calneh the following day to pacify the community, where a dispute had arisen over the appointment of a successor to the deceased dayyan. The Jewish community of al-Raqqa also prospered during the period of the Crusades. In the latter half of the 12th century, the traveler benjamin of Tudela found about 700 Jews there. In 1191 the head of the Baghdad academy, Samuel b. 'Ali, addressed an iggeret ("letter") to al-Raqqa and other important communities in northern Babylonia and Syria. A letter from the last decade of that century, from a Jewish scholar in al-Raqqa to cairo , is extant; he sends greetings to maimonides and tells about his contacts with the Jews of aleppo . At the beginning of the 13th century Judah Al-Ḥarizi visited the city and complained about the miserliness of the Jews living there, deriding them bitterly. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Al-Harizi, Juda b. Solomon, Tahkemoni, ed. by A. Kaminka (1899), 189, 367, 399, 411, 417, 453; Mann, Egypt, 1 (1920), 201, 245f.; Assaf, in: Tarbiz, 1 pt. 1 (1930), 102–30; 1 pt. 2 (1930), 43–84; 1 pt. 3 (1930), 15–80. (Eliyahu Ashtor)