Palestine, after a brief restoration of 'Abbasid authority, comes under the rule of the Ikhshidids, an Egyptian-based dynasty of Sogdian origins.

A small Jewish enclave at Tiberias plays an important spiritual role in the far-flung Jewish community.

Tiberias had been revitalized in 749, after Bet Shean was destroyed in an earthquake.

An imposing mosque, ninety meters long by seventy-eight meters wide, resembling the Great Mosque of Damascus, was raised at the foot of Mount Berenice next to a Christian church, to the south of the city, as the eighth century ushered in Tiberias's golden age, when the multicultural city may have been the most tolerant of the Middle East.

Jewish scholarship flourishes from the beginning of the eighth century to the end of the tenth, when the oral traditions of ancient Hebrew, still in use today, are codified.

One of the leading members of the Tiberian Masoretic community is Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, who refines the oral tradition now known as Tiberian Hebrew.

Ben Asher is also credited with putting the finishing touches on the Aleppo Codex, the oldest existing manuscript of the Hebrew scriptures.