Nathan ben Isaac ha-Kohen ha-Babli was a Babylonian Jewish

History of the Jews in Iraq

The history of the Jews in Iraq is documented from the time of the Babylonian captivity c. 586 BCE. Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities....

 historian of the 10th century. He was the author of a history of the exilarchate that gives many interesting details in regard to the exilarch

Exilarch

Exilarch refers to the leaders of the Diaspora Jewish community in Babylon following the deportation of King Jeconiah and his court into Babylonian exile after the first fall of Jerusalem in 597 BCE and augmented after the further deportations following the destruction...

s, particularly his contemporary Mar Ukba

Mar Ukba

Mar Ukba, an exilarch at Baghdad in the first half of the tenth century; the second exilarch to die in banishment. When Kohen Ẓedeḳ II was appointed gaon of Pumbedita he became involved in a controversy with Mar 'Uḳba over the revenues from Khorasan; and the calif Al-Muḳtadir was induced by...

. Extracts from this history were published by Samuel Shullam

Samuel Shullam

Samuel Shullam was a Jewish physician and historian who flourished in the second half of the 16th century. He was of Spanish descent, and after an adventurous life went to Constantinople, where he was supported by Kiera , who stood high in favor at the court of the sultan...

 in his edition of Zacuto's Yuḥasin (Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

, 1546), as well as by A. Neubauer (M. J. C. ii. 83 et seq.). Shullam's work is the only surviving source for Nathan's history other than an Arabic fragment published by Israel Friedlander

Israel Friedlander

Israel Friedlander, also spelled Friedlaender was a rabbi, educator, translator, and biblical scholar...

.

Since Nathan ben Jehiel

Nathan ben Jehiel

Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome was a Jewish Italian lexicographer. He was born in Rome not later than 1035 to one of the most notable Roman families of Jewish scholars. Owing to an error propagated by Azulai, he has been regarded as a scion of the house of De Pomis...

 of Rome, the author of the Arukh, is quoted in Zacuto's Yuḥasin (ed. Filipowski, p. 174, London, 1856) as "Nathan ha-Babli of Narbonne," H. Grätz

Heinrich Graetz

Heinrich Graetz was amongst the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective....

 (Gesch. 3d ed., v. 288, 469-471) mistook the latter for Nathan ben Isaac ha-Kohen ha-Babli and ascribed to him an Arukh similar to that written by Nathan b. Jehiel. Grätz even went so far as to identify Nathan ben Isaac with the fourth of the four prisoners captured by Ibn Rumaḥis (see Ḥushiel ben Elhanan), assuming that he settled afterward at Narbonne

Narbonne

Narbonne is a commune in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Once a prosperous port, it is now located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea...

.

Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography

• A. Geiger, in Hebr. Bibl. iii.4;
• Henri Gross, Gallia Judaica, p. 409.