Background
Little is known of Anan’s life. A Babylonian of aristocratic descent, he lived in an eastern country.
Little is known of Anan’s life. A Babylonian of aristocratic descent, he lived in an eastern country.
He studied in Babylonia under the outstanding rabbinical authority, Yehudai Gaon.
The lay leader of the Babylonian Jewish community was known as the exilarch (head of the exile community), an office greatly honored not only by the Jews but also by the caliph. Anan was the eldest son of the exilarch’s brother and expected to succeed to the office. As a result he behaved haughtily and fearlessly, which alienated the leaders of the rabbinic academies. It was also suspected that some of his views were not orthodox. As a result, when the exilarch died, the academies did not follow precedent but passed him over for his younger brother. Various accounts, some of them legendary, seek to explain his subsequent rebellion, but the usually accepted story is that it was motivated by jealousy of his younger brother.
For refusing to accept his brother’s authority, he was jailed and, according to one account, was only saved from being put to death by following the advice of a Muslim legal scholar who was in the same prison. The Muslim suggested that if he said that he headed a breakaway group, he would be saved as the Muslim authorities were tolerant of sects.
The Karaites grew rapidly in the ensuing centuries and at one time threatened the hegemony of rabbinic Judaism. The threat was contained largely due to the activities of Saadia Gaon. Small groups of Karaites, who still regard Anan as the founder of their sect, continue to exist in Israel, Egypt, Turkey, the United States, and countries of the former Soviet Union.
The word Karaite comes from the Hebrew kara, which is the root of mikra (scripture). The British Chief Rabbi, Hermann Adler, at the beginning of the 20th century divided the Jews into the “Karaites" and the “Don’t Karaites."
Anan brought together various dissident Jewish fundamentalist groups who did not accept rabbinic authority and interpretation of the Bible. Anan’s struggle was now transformed from the question of the exilarch to the validity of rabbinic law which he rejected.
Anan’s book Sefer ha-Mitzvot (“Book of Commandments”) provided the ideological basis of the Karaiteschism. Only fragments survive but its general tenor is apparent. It addressed itself to the legal basis of Judaism and rejected the rabbinic tradition that an oral tradition had been given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai and preserved by successive generations until written down by Judah ha-Nasi in the Mishnah, in the early 3rd century CE. Anan held that the Bible was the exclusive authority, and this referred to the Prophets and Writings as well as the Pentateuch.