JEWSa population that was heavily Jewish and does not include the Jews
in other parts of Iraq.
Jews survived in early Islamic Iraq at approximately the same lo-
cations as in the Sasanian period. The main concentration was still
between Hira and Mada'in in the Sawad of Kufa. There are early
references to Jews at Falluja and Mathamasya (Mata Mehasia) near
Sura in the 640s.^20 Jews continued to live at Hira after the conquest.
In 696, al-Hajjaj told the people of Kufa who would not fight the
Khawarij to go over to Hira and live with the Jews and Christians;21
but, according to Abii Yiisuf, the Jews of Hira had converted to Islam
by the time of 'Umar 11 (717-720).22 Sura and Nahr al-Malik were
still solidly Jewish in the tenth century.23 Elsewhere, Jewish commu-
nities survived in Maysan,24 in Adiabene,25 and at Nasibin. But there
were also Jews at the new cities of Basra^26 and Kufa^27 shortly after
the conquest, and at Ukbara by the early ninth century.28
Linguistically and culturally, the Jews of Sasanian and early Islamic
Iraq were Aramaeans. Aramaic was spoken in the Rabbinic schools
and used on documents and to report the decisions in legal cases in
the Talmud. Hebrew scriptures used liturgically were translated into
Aramaic 'so the congregation would understand them.^29 The same
dialect of Aramaic occurs on incantation bowls commissioned by Jews
at Nippur at the end of the Sasanian period.
Both the Talmud and the incantation bowls reveal the mixture of
religious and ethnic traditions among the Aramaic-speaking popula-
tion. Nippur was a mixed community of Jews, pagans, and Man-
daeans.3o The names of the people who commissioned the bowls in
Talmudic Aramaic are a mixture of Hebrew, Syriac, and Persian and
suggest intermarriage between Persians and Aramaeans. A good ex-
20 Guidi, Chronica Minora I, I, 32-33; 11, 27-28.
21 TabarI, Ta'rfkh, 11, 955.
22 Abii Yiisuf, Khariij, p. 202.
23 Mez, Renaissance, pp. 33-34.
24 A. Eckstein and W. Bacher, "Gaon," JE, V, 571; AI-'Ali, "Min~aqat Wasi~," (1),
p. 250, (2), p. 168; Le Strange, Lands, p. 43.
15 Fiey, Assyrie chretienne, I, 166.
26 Abii Yiisuf, Khariij, p. 278; Obermeyer, Landschaft Babylonien, pp. 338-39.
17 Ibn Khallikan, Biographical Dictionary, I, 260; Ibn an-Nadlm, Fihrist I, 420.
28 L. Nemoy, "AI-Qirqisani's account of the Jewish Sects and Christianity," HUCA
7 (1930), 329-30, 389.
29 Neusner, History, p. 209; idem, Talmudic Judaism, p. 92; Rodkinson, Talmud,
XIV, "Baba Bathra," 368, 244-45; idem, XVI, "Sanhedrin," 288.
30 Montgomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 14, 103, 113.