Rav Saadia Gaon zt"l
הרב סעדיה בן יוסף גאון זצ"ל
Iyar 26 , 4702
Rav Saadia Gaon zt"l
Rabbi Saadia ben Yosef, one of the last and most famous Gaonim, a great Talmudic scholar, Jewish philosopher and inspiring leader, was born in a small village near Fayyum, in Egypt (the site of the ancient city Pithom which together with Raamses was built by Jewish slaves under the Pharaohs). His family traced its origin from Yehuda, the son of Yaakov.
His father, Rabbi Yosef, was a learned man and he was Saadia's first teacher. Saadia had excellent qualities and was a brilliant student. Before he reached the age of twenty years, he already wrote his first work, the Agron, the first Hebrew dictionary and grammar. It was a great help to Hebrew poets and writers of sacred poems. The famous poet and commentator on the Torah, Rabbi Avrohom Ibn Ezra, who lived about two hundred years later, praised this work highly, and considered its author as the earliest authority on the Hebrew language.
Rabbi Saadia became even more famous when he began his writings against the Karaites. The Karaites,were a sect of Jews which came into being many years before Saadia. Which denied the authority of the Talmud, believing only in the T'NaCh, had become very strong and influential in Saadia's time, especially in Egypt.
Rav Saadia - he was barely twenty three years old when he declared "war", against the powerful Karaites. Indeed, Saadia's writings which proved the falsity of the whole Karaite doctrine, had a tremendous impact, and many Karaites or would-be Karaites, began to see the light. The leaders of the Karaites, seeing that they could not defeat the young scholar in a battle of wit and scholarship, began to persecute him by open hostility. Fanatical Karaites broke into his home, and ransacked and destroyed his writings and books. Rabbi Saadia's very life was in peril, and he could no longer remain in his native land. Soabbi Saadia left Egypt and went to the Holy Land, from there he continued his relentless fight against the Karaite.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112319/jewish/Rabbi-Saadia-Gaon.htm