ABSTRACT
SAADIAH ben-Joseph 882-942. Gaon of Sura 922-42. Saadiah was the most eminent of the geonim, and was instrumental in saving rabbinic Judaism from the dangers of sectarianism which gravely threatened it at that time. Saadiah was born in Egypt. At the age of twenty he published a Hebrew dictionary, followed three years later by a polemic against Karaism, the sect which threatened to split the Jewish world at the time (see ANAN BEN-DAVID).
