ABRAHAM GAON

ABRAHAM GAON (tenth century), head of the Palestinian yeshivah. Abraham was a great-grandson of the gaon aaron b. meir who was involved with saadiah in the calendar controversy of 921–22. The view that Abraham was the founder of the Palestinian gaonate has been shown to be untenable, since this gaonate existed at least a century before Abraham and its supremacy was then recognized by its Babylonian counterpart. Manuscripts of genealogical tables mentioning Abraham refer to four of his sons. One of them, Aaron, became the successor to his father's successor, Josiah, av bet din. Isaac was "third man" (i.e., next in rank to the av bet din) under Abraham's immediate successor, Joseph ha-Kohen, i.e., while Meir was head of the academy (rosh ha-seder), probably in Egypt. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. Poznański, Babylonische Geonim… (1914), 4–5, 84, 97; Mann, Egypt, 1 (1920), 71, no. 6; S. Assaf and L.A. Mayer (eds.), Sefer ha-Yishuv, 2 (1944), 89, 127; Abramson, Merkazim, 31, 32.