Rav Yehudai Gaon רב יהודאי גאון
the first gaon whose rulings became a book; he was blind
The Talmud is not a book of rulings: it is a book of arguments, and what should be done as a result is often not stated in it. The first man to set about writing out its practical upshot was Rav Yehudai, gaon of Sura in the middle of the eighth century.
Associated with his name are the Halakhot Pesukot — "decided laws": a compendium giving the conclusion on each subject without the argument. A qualification is needed at once: the attribution is traditional and disputed; the text may have been written down by students from his teaching. The genuine manuscript was found in Yemen and published only in 1951.
He was blind; Rav Sherira Gaon already reports it.
The importance of this step is hard to overstate. From the Halakhot Pesukot and the related Halakhot Gedolot runs the line that reaches, through Alfasi and Maimonides, to the Shulchan Aruch. The geonim were the first to grasp that communities scattered from Spain to India needed not a retelling of the argument but an answer.
On the timeline
Sources
Rishonim
- Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the gaonate at Sura, and the blindness
- Halakhot Pesukot — the compendium of rulings; the attribution is traditional and disputed
Basis: documents and evidence.