The
Talmudic Academies in Babylonia, also known as the
Geonic Academies, were the center for
Jewish scholarship and the development of
Jewish law from roughly 589 to 1038 CE (
Hebrew dates: 4349 AM to 4798 AM) in what is called "Babylonia" in Jewish sources, at the time otherwise known as
Asuristan (under the
Sassanids) or
Iraq (under the
Muslim caliphate until the 11th century). It is neither
geopolitically, nor geographically identical with the ancient empires of
Babylonia, since the Jewish focus of interest has to do with the Jewish religious academies, which were mainly situated in an area between the rivers
Tigris and
Euphrates and primarily between
Pumbedita (modern
Fallujah, a town west of
Baghdad), and
Sura, a town farther south down the Euphrates.