Karaite Judaism
A living tradition within Judaism. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Karaite Judaism is a living tradition within Judaism. Also written Karaism, Qaraʾim, Bnei Mikra.
Origin
Founder named in the sources: Anan ben David (fl. 8th century), founder of the Ananites. No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. NULL: Britannica records that Anan ben David, a Persian Jew, became prominent in the 760s CE when he competed with his younger brother for the office of exilarch and failed to obtain the caliph's confirmation; he founded the antirabbinical Ananites and worked out a code of life independent of the Talmud. Supporters were initially called Ananites; the name 'Karaites' was adopted during the ninth or tenth century to underscore a personal reading of Scripture. No founding year is given by the sources and none is estimated.
Continue reading this article
Sign in free to read in full. Become a member to join the discussion without limits.
Sign in free to read- ✓Read every article
- ✓Comment and reply (up to 100 words, 10/month)
- ✓Browse the community
- ✓Reader badge
- ✓
Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Karaite Judaism.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-karaite-judaism.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-karaite-judaism-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Karaite Judaism},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-karaite-judaism},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.