Editing Radhanite (section)

==Name==
Several etymologies have been suggested for the word "Radhanite". Many scholars, including [[Barbier de Meynard]] and [[Moshe Gil]], believe it refers to a district in [[Mesopotamia]] called "[[Rādhān|the land of Radhan]]" in [[Arabic]] and [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] texts of the period.{{ref|gil1}}

Another hypothesis suggests that the name might be derived from the city of [[Ray, Iran|Ray]] (Rhages) in northern [[Iran]]. Still others think the name possibly derives from the [[Persian language|Persian]] terms ''rah'' "way, path" and  ''dān'' "one who knows", meaning "one who knows the way".{{ref|gil2}}

Two western Jewish historians, [[Cecil Roth]] and [[Claude Cahen]], have suggested a connection to the name of the [[Rhône]] River valley in [[France]], which is ''Rhodanus'' in [[Latin]] and ''Rhodanos'' (Ῥοδανός) in [[Ancient Greek|Greek]]. They claim that the center of Radhanite activity was probably in France as all of their trade routes began there.{{ref|France}}

English-language and other Western sources added the suffix ''-ite'' to the term, as is done with [[ethnonym]]s or names derived from place names.{{ref|rhages}}