ʿANAN BEN DAVID (fl. Baghdad, second half of the eighth century CE), titular founder of the Karaites, a Jewish sect. According to a rabbinic-Jewish (Rabbinite) tradition cited first by the twelfth-century Karaite author Eliyyahu ben Avraham, ʿAnan was rejected for the position of exilarch (secular head of the Jewish community in Iraq and its representative before the Muslim caliph's court) on the ground of heretical tendencies. When the office went to his younger brother Ḥananyah, ʿAnan's followers (styled Ananites, or ʿĀnānīyah in Arabic) declared him their own exilarch. Since this action amounted to open defiance of the caliph's customary right to confirm a newly elected exilarch, ʿAnan was cast into prison and faced execution. A Muslim fellow-prisoner (according to Jewish sources, Abū Ḥanīfah, the founder of the Ḥanafī school of Muslim jurisprudence) advised him to bribe his...