The city of Pumbedita was said to have possessed a Jewish population since the days of Second Temple of Jerusalem.[2]
The city had a large Jewish population and was famed for its Pumbedita Academy, whose scholarship, together with the city of Sura, gave rise to the Babylonian Talmud. The academy there was founded by Judah ben Ezekiel in the late third century. The academy was established after the destruction of the academy of Nehardea. Nehardea, being the capital city, was destroyed during the Persian–Palmyrian war.
The Nahr-al-Badāt was a long drainage channel taken from the left bank of the Kūfah arm of the Euphrates, at a day's journey to the north of Kūfah city, probably near the town of Kanṭarah-al-Kūfah . . . [which] probably lay adjacent to, or possibly was identical with, the Hebrew Pombedita.[3]
However, this location is too far south and has been rejected by more recent scholarship. Sherira ben Hanina (tentative ascription) writes that in Arabic the Bedita is called al-Bedei'a.[1] Some scholars have connected Pumbedita to Fallujah, but for no good reason.[4] The twelfth-century travel account of Benjamin of Tudela gives this description:
. . . and from there it is two days to Al-Anbar, which is Pumbedita in Nehardea. Here are about 3,000 Jews, including scholars, at the head of which are Rabbi Chen the teacher, Rabbi Moses, and Rabbi Jehoakim. Also here are the graves of Rabbi Judah and Samuel, and before each is the synagogue which they built in life, and that of Bostanai the prince and exilarch, and those of Rabbi Nathan and Rabbi Nahman bar Pappa.
Al-Anbar ("the granaries") is mentioned by Ibn Serapion, and Strange identifies it with "the ruins named Sifeyra".[5] According to William McGuckin de Slane, it lay ten parasangs to the west of Baghdad.[6]
