Hitherto the great centres of learning had been in the East, and the most promising scholars, even from Spain itself, had resorted thither. But the Persian Caliphate had, for a century or two, been undergoing a gradual but total change. The sovereigns were enervated by ease and luxury; usurpers rent away large portions of their dominions; and the great Emirs grew ever more independent, grasping at last nearly the whole power of the Crown. It was probably these new rulers who set on foot the persecution of their Jewish fellow-subjects. Indifferent as Omar himself could have been to the high repute which the Oriental Academies had attained, they shut up the Jewish Colleges, exiled their learned doctors, and in fine, A.D. 980, drove the Jews altogether from Babylon. Four of the most renowned of the Rabbins were captured, on their outward voyage, by one of the corsairs belonging to the Caliph of Cordova, whom he had sent to cruise in the Greek Archipelago. These four were Rabbi Shemariah, Rabbi Hoshiel, Rabbi Moses, and his son, Rabbi Hanoch. The fate of these four was remarkable. Utterly ignorant of the high value which men of culture and refinement would set upon his prisoners, the corsair sold Shemariah at Alexandria, and the slave rose to be the chief man among the Alexandrian Jews. Rabbi Hoshiel he similarly disposed of to a purchaser on the coast of Africa; and Hoshiel was thence conveyed to Alkihoran, where he attained the rank of Chief Rabbi. Rabbi Moses and his son he conveyed to Cordova. It chanced that the wife of the former was a beautiful woman, and the brutal corsair, captivated by her charms, assailed her with his importunities. Finding herself wholly in his power, she inquired of her husband whether, at the Day of Judgment, the sea would give up its dead. He answered her from the 68th Psalm, ‘The Lord said, Mine own will I bring again from Bashan, I will bring again from the depths of the sea;’ on receiving which reply, seeing no other way of escaping violence, she plunged into the sea and was drowned. A similar tale is told of Esther Cohen in the sixteenth century.