Arabic sūrafrom Aramaic šurāabsolute form ofšurətārow, linešwr in Semitic roots
From
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
From Arabicسُورَةٌ (sÅ«ra, “chapter of the Qur'an"), from سور (sáwwara, “to enclose, to wall in").
From
Wiktionary
Sura Sentence Examples
The earliest existing codification of the prayerbook is the Siddur (order) drawn up by Amram Gaon of Sura about 850.
Half a century later the famous Gaon Seadiah, also of Sura, issued his Siddur, in which the rubrical matter is in Arabic. Besides the Siddur, or order for Sabbaths and general use, there is the Mahzor (cycle) for festivals and fasts.
Besides the Responsa, but closely related to them, we have the lesser Halakhoth of Yehudai Gaon of Sura (8th century) and the great Halakhoth of Simeon Qayyara of Sura (not Gaon) in the 9th century.
All these writers, however, are entirely eclipsed by the commanding personality of the most famous of the Geonim, Seadiah ben Joseph (q.v.) of Sura, often called al-Fayyumi (of the Fayum in Egypt), one of the greatest representatives of Jewish learning of all times, who died in 942.
A day's journey beyond this, on the Syrian side, stand the remains of ancient Sura, a frontier fortress of the Romans against the Parthians; 20 m.
