Sura (city) in the context of Pumbedita

The Masoretes (Hebrew: בַּעֲלֵי הַמָּסוֹרָה, romanized: Baʿălēy Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Masters of the Tradition') were groups of Jewish scribe-scholars who worked from around the end of the 5th through 10th centuries AD, based primarily in the Jewish centers of the Levant (e.g., Tiberias and Jerusalem) and Mesopotamia (e.g., Sura and Nehardea). Each group compiled a system of pronunciation and grammatical guides in the form of diacritical notes (niqqud) on the external form of the biblical text in an attempt to standardize the pronunciation, paragraph and verse divisions, and cantillation of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) for the worldwide Jewish community.

The ben Asher family of Masoretes was largely responsible for the preservation and production of the Masoretic Text, although there existed an alternative Masoretic text of the ben Naphtali Masoretes, which has around 875 differences from the ben Asher text. The halakhic authority Maimonides endorsed the ben Asher as superior, although the Egyptian Jewish scholar, the Saadya Gaon, had preferred the ben Naphtali system. It has been suggested that the ben Asher family and the majority of the Masoretes were Karaites. However, Geoffrey Khan believes that the ben Asher family was probably not Karaite, and Aron Dotan avers that there are "decisive proofs that M. Ben-Asher was not a Karaite."

The Gemara (also transliterated Gemarah, or in Yiddish Gemore) comprises a collection of rabbinical analyses and commentaries on the Mishnah and presented in 63 books. The term is derived from the Aramaic word גמרא‎ and rooted in the Semitic word ג-מ-ר (gamar), which means "to finish" or "complete". Initially, the Gemara was transmitted orally and not permitted to be written down. However, after Judah the Prince compiled the Mishnah around 200 CE, rabbis from Babylonia and the Land of Israel extensively studied the work. Their discussions were eventually documented in a series of books, which would come to be known as the Gemara. There are two versions of the Talmud: the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli) and the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi). The Mishnah is virtually the same in two Talmuds; the Gemara is what differentiates the Babylonian Talmud from its Jerusalem counterpart.

The Babylonian Talmud, compiled by scholars in Babylonia around 500 CE and primarily from the academies of Sura, Pumbedita, and Nehardea, is the more commonly cited version when referring to the "Gemara" or "Talmud"; redaction of the Jerusalem Talmud was interrupted in the mid-fourth century when the Romans suppressed Jewish scholarship in Israel and most Talmudists fled to Babylon. As a result, the Bavli was more intensively edited, studied, and commented on. The main compilers of the Babylonian Talmud were Ravina and Rav Ashi. The Jerusalem Talmud was compiled by Jewish scholars in the Land of Israel, primarily from the academies of Tiberias and Caesarea, around 350–400 CE.

Rav Ashi (Hebrew: רב אשי) ("Rabbi Ashi") (352–427) was a Babylonian Jewish rabbi, of the sixth generation of amoraim. He reestablished the Academy at Sura and was the first editor of the Babylonian Talmud.

The original pronunciation of his name may have been Asheh, as suggested by the rhyming of his name with "Mosheh" in Maimonides' writings, and a possible rhyme with the word mikdashei (Psalms 73:17) in the Talmud itself.

Sura Academy (Hebrew: ישיבת סורא) was a Jewish yeshiva located in Sura in what is now southern Iraq, a region known in Jewish texts as "Babylonia". With Pumbedita Academy, it was one of the two major Jewish academies from the year 225 CE at the beginning of the era of the Amora sages until 1033 CE at the end of the era of the Gaonim. Sura Academy was founded by the Amora Abba Arikha ("Rav"), a disciple of Judah ha-Nasi. Among the well-known sages that headed the yeshiva were Rav Huna, Rav Chisda, Rav Ashi, Yehudai ben Nahman, Natronai ben Hilai, Saadia Gaon, and others.

The Talmudic academies in Babylonia, also known as the Geonic academies, were the center for Jewish scholarship and the development of Halakha during the Geonic era (from c. 589 to 1038 CE; Hebrew dates: 4349 AM to 4798 AM) in what is called "Babylonia" in Jewish sources. This term 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. At the time this area was part of the region known as Asōristān (under the Sasanian Empire) or Iraq (under the Muslim caliphate until the 11th century).

The key work of these academies was the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud, started by Rav Ashi and Ravina, two leaders of the Babylonian Jewish community, around the year 550. Editorial work by the Savoraim or Rabbanan Savoraei (post-Talmudic rabbis), continued on this text for the next 250 years. In fact, much of the text did not reach its final form until around 700. The two most famous academies were located at Sura and Pumbedita; the Sura Academy was originally dominant, but its authority waned towards the end of the Geonic period and the Pumbedita Academy's Geonate gained ascendancy. Major yeshivot were also located at Nehardea and Mahuza (al-Mada'in).