Persecutions under Péroz and Kavadh

The Sassanid Empire was home to the largest Jewish community in the world at the time, organized around the exilarch — a lay leader recognized by the court, reputed to be of Davidic lineage — and the academies of Sura and Pumbedita, where the Babylonian Talmud was nearing completion.

The reign of Peroz broke with the relative tolerance of preceding centuries: the Mazdean clergy secured measures against foreign cults, synagogues were closed, schools dispersed, and Jewish tradition preserves the memory of executions in Isfahan. Under Kavadh, amid the Mazdakite upheavals, the exilarch Mar Zutra II, who had maintained an autonomous Jewish principality at Mahoza, was executed and his body displayed on a bridge.

The academies relocated and fell silent for a time; they resumed under subsequent reigns, and it is to this troubled period that tradition dates the closure of the Talmud.