The Exilarchate ראש גלותא

Reish Galuta — "head of the exile" — was an office that existed in Babylonia from Talmudic times to the eleventh century. It was hereditary, held by a family that traced itself to King David through Jehoiachin, who had been carried off to Babylon.

The authority was secular: collecting taxes, appointing judges, representing the community before the Persian and later the Arab ruler. Beside it stood authority of another kind — the heads of the academies of Sura and Pumbedita, the geonim. Formally the geonim were subject to the Exilarch, and at his installation they sat at his right and his left.

The relations of the two authorities are the plot of the whole era. There is the deposing of the Exilarch Ukva at a gaon's insistence, and the loudest case of all — the clash of Rav Saadia Gaon with the Exilarch David ben Zakkai in the 930s: mutual excommunications, Saadia's appointment of a rival Exilarch, and a reconciliation only years later.

David ben Zakkai is reckoned the last Exilarch to play a notable part. After him the office fades along with the Babylonian academies themselves.