Pirqoi ben Baboi (), also written Pirqoi ben Babui, was a Babylonian scholar of the Talmud who lived sometime in the 8th–9th century. He is chiefly remembered for a polemical letter he wrote, addressed to all places in Afriqiya and Sfarad, but thought to be directed in particular to the Qeirwān Jewish community in Tunisia concerning the traditions of Eretz Israel. His writings have been called 'one of the most intriguing Babylonian Jewish texts to have survived the vicissitudes of history'. Biography The precise dates of his floruit are unknown, except that context suggests he lived around 800 CE. His unusual name Pirqoi seems to be a Persian personal name, with Jacob Nahum Epstein inferring from this hypothesis that he must have been born and raised in Babylonia. The alternative view, advanced by Louis Ginzberg is that he was a native of Eretz Israel who emigrated and settled in Babylonia to pursue his studies. The latter theory fits well with the fact of his familiarity with Palestinian usages and texts. He was a disciple of Rav(a)Abba/Rabah who had in turn sat at the feet of Yehudai Gaon, with some sources saying Pirquoi ben Baboi studied under both. He is associated with both the Sura and Pumbedita academies. Background After the Muslim conquest of Iraq, Babylonian rabbis retained strong memories of their communal life under the Sasanian Empire. Politically, the entire Middle East had now come under unified Islamic rule but, like some Syrian Christian writers such as John of Fenek, Pirqoi ben Baboi evoked in exaggerated terms the pre-existing geopolitical division as still marking a cultural rift between the tranquil life of Jews from Sasanian times onward and Jewish communities to the west under Byzantine authority, characterized by endemic persecutions. The ostensible difference was deployed to buttress Babylonian Jewry's claims to superiority over those in Palestine/Eretz Israel, whose legal customs were a result of persecution (minhagei shmad). Pirqoi ben Baboi would cite a verse from Daniel 7:5 'and three ribs were between his teeth' as prophetic of the sway which the evil empires of Greece and Rome (Edom) would subsequently exercise, to the detriment of proper Torah traditions, over communities to the west of Babylonia, taking the line to be an allusion to the fate of Harran, Nisibis and Adiabene. The Jewish communities in Babylonia, he falsely asserts by ignoring the evidence of the late Sasanian period, never suffered persecution.