Haï was universally acknowledged as an authority, and through his influence the school of Pumbeditha somewhat recovered its prestige. The great scholars Nissim and Chananel of Kairuan, the community of Fez, the vizir Samuel Nagid, Gershom of Mayence, the authority of the German Jews, and the other authorities of the communities of three parts of the world, submitted questions to him, and honored him as the chief representative of Judaism. He was called "the father of Israel." The Exilarchate had been practically extinct since the death of the grandson of David ben Zaccaï, and Haï stood at the head of Judaism. No fitter man could have been found to represent it. Unlike the former Geonim of Pumbeditha, who all looked askance at the sister academy, unlike his father, who felt a keen delight when Sora was without a chief, Haï did his best to give it a leader in the person of Samuel ben Chofni, who filled his office during Haï's Gaonate. Samuel was his father-in-law, and his equal in learning and character. He wrote several systematic works on the ritual, and a commentary on the Pentateuch, in which he set forth the same philosophical views about the unity of God as the followers of the Mutazilist school. His commentary on the Pentateuch, indeed, is not very much praised. It was, like the Karaite commentaries, diffuse, and contained discussions on irrelevant questions. But although his exegetical works mark no distinct progress, yet they show the important fact that the Geonim followed the scientific lines laid down by Saadiah. Samuel ben Chofni's interpretations of the Bible are all rationalistic. He always endeavors to explain the miraculous events narrated in the Bible as if they were natural. He explained the story of the witch of Endor, and of Balaam, as dreams. Like Saadiah, he attacked Karaism, the occasion being a keen controversy which broke out at that time between the Karaites and the Rabbanites. Samuel ben Chofni died four years before his son-in-law Haï (1034), and thus ended the line of the Geonim of Sora. This school does not appear to have made any effort to continue after his death. The times were in every way unfavorable to the Gaonate, and it was impossible for it to regain its pristine vigor. When Haï died, in 1038, mourned by all the Jews, and eulogized by the greatest poet of the time, Ibn-Gebirol, and by his admirer Chananel, in Africa, the time for the dissolution of the school of Pumbeditha had also come. It is true that the college immediately chose a successor, who acted at once as Gaon and as Exilarch, it seems only in order to have the two offices buried together in the same grave with his person.