ABSTRACT
Eldad the Danite visited the Jewish communities along the Mediterranean Basin at a formative moment in their existence. The vast majority of the Jewish people were still concentrated in the two centers: the Land of Israel, under Byzantine rule; and Babylon, under Sasanian rule. The subject of the query that the Kairouanites submitted to the gaon is not Eldad's tradition, but rather that of the Rabbinites. The query was dispatched by the Jewish community in Kairouan, a city in modern-day Tunis, to Rabbi Zemah ben Hayim, the gaon in Babylonia, whom sent back his response. A wider Jewish geographical dispersion was prompted by the Muslim conquest of the Middle East and the southern and western basins of the Mediterranean Sea. In addition, the new capital was the seat of the exilarch - an executive, secular office whose hereditary holder presumably led the Jewish world.
