RESOURCES(Berlin, 1887); Miiller, Einleitung in die Responsen der Babylonischen
Geonen (Berlin, 1891); L. Ginsberg, Geonica (New York, 1909); and
A. Marx, "Studies in Gaonic History and Literature," JQR, n.s. 1
(1910-1911): 61-104. The most useful survey of the possibilities con-
tained in this material is J. Mann's "The Responsa of the Babylonian
Geonim as a Source of Jewish History," JQR 7 (1916-17): 457-90;
8 (1917-18): 339-66; 9 (1918-19): 139-79; 10 (1919-20): 121-51,
309-65. B. Cohen's Kuntres ha-Teshubot (Budapest, 1930) is a bib-
liography of responses published until 1930. Subsequent studies in-
clude V. Aptowitzer's "Untersuchungen zur gaonaischen Literatur,"
HUCA 7-8 (1931-32): 373-444; the Hebrew works of S. Assaf,
Gaonica Gerusalem, 1933), "Letters of Babylonian Geonim," Tarbiz
11 (1939-40), Responsa Geonica Gerusalem, 1942), and Tequfat ha-
Gaonim Gerusalem, 1955); and S. B. Freehof's The Responsa Liter-
ature (Philadelphia, 1959).
Two later synthetic accounts of the history of the Iraqi Jewish com-
munity in the Sasanian and early Islamic periods survive in Hebrew.
One is the local Iggeret (Letter) of Sherira Gaon of Pumbaditha (968-
98). This text is published in A. Neubauer's Medieval Jewish Chron-
ides (Oxford, 1887-95), I: 1-46, but the best edition is B. Lewin's
Iggeret R. Scherira Gaon (Haifa, 1921), which gives the versions from
both Spain and France. The other is in Abraham ibn Daud's symbolic
chronology composed in twelfth-century Spain called Sefer ha-Qab-
balah. This has been edited with an English translation by G. Cohen
as The Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-Qabbalah) (Philadelphia and Lon-
don, 1967).
The locations where Jews lived in Iraq may be found in the geo-
graphical works of Berliner and Neubauer noted above as well as in
H. Graetz, Das Konigreich von Mesene und seine judische Bevolkerung
(Breslau, 1879), and]. B. Segal, "The Jews of North Mesopotamia
before the Rise of Islam (mainly from Syriac sources)," in Studies in
the Bible Presented to Professor M. H. Segal, ed. J. M. Grentz and
]. Liver Gerusalem, 1964), pp. 3r-63*. For archeology devoted to
sites occupied by Jews in Iraq, seeJ. Neusner and]. Smith, "Archeology
and Babylonian Jewry," in Near Eastern Archeology in the Twentieth
Century, ed. J. Saunders (Garden City, N.Y., 1970), pp. 331-47. The
latest presentation of the third-century synagogue at Dura-Europos is
in H. Shanks's Judaism in Stone: The Archaeology of Ancient Syn-
agogues (New York, 1979), pp. 78-96. The best treatment of Jews as
farmers is J. Newman's The Agricultural Life of the Jews in Babylonia