Raḥbah, Al-
RAḤBAH, AL-
RAḤBAH, AL- , town situated on the W. bank of the Euphrates, S. of Kirkisiya. Founded in the first third of the ninth century by Mālik ibn Ṭauq, al-Raḥbah was named Raḥbat Mālik ibn Ṭauq to differentiate it from other towns bearing the name Al-Raḥbah. Onkelos, and after him R. *Saadiah Gaon, identify the town with the biblical Rehoboth by the River (Gen. 36:37), while the Arab geographer Yāqūt reports an ancient tradition, according to which Al-Raḥbah was founded by Namrūd (Nimrod) b. Kūsh. It was, at any rate, one of the large cities on the Euphrates – as confirmed by another Arab geographer, al-Mukaddasī, writing at the end of the tenth century – and it had a large Jewish community. Obadiah the proselyte was in this town at the beginning of the 12th century. *Benjamin of Tudela, the 12th-century traveler, found a Jewish community of 2,000 there. In a letter (iggeret) written by R. *Samuel b. Ali, head of the *Baghdad academy, in 1191, Al-Raḥbah heads the list of the communities of northern *Babylonia and *Syria. There were also *Karaites living in the town, as is known from a list appearing at the end of a manuscript of Japheth b. Ali's commentary on Numbers, dedicated by Moses b. Japheth al-Raḥbī to the Karaite community in *Jerusalem. By the 14th century the ancient town had been destroyed and its site had been moved further to the west. At the time that the town was included within the *Mamluk kingdom, Jews still lived there, as may be inferred from an inscription found in the synagogue of Tadef (a village near *Aleppo), dating apparently from about 1400, which mentions the name "Obadiah b. Moses … b. Abraham al-Raḥbī." During Ottoman rule Jews from al-Raḥbah moved to *India, and some of them (e.g., a prominent family that lived in Cochin in the 18th century), bore the name of their ancient home.
bibliography:
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-Buldāns.v.; J. Obermeyer, Die Landschaft Babylonien (1929), 36f; Mann, Texts, 2 (1935), 28f; Ashtor, Toledot, 1 (1944), 278; 2 (1951), 120; S.D. Goitein, in: JJS, 4 (1953), 83; A. Ben-Jacob, Yehudei Bavel (1965), 56.
[Eliyahu Ashtor]