A Cairo genizah fragment of the Taylor-Schechter collection, containing a letter to Shemariah ben Elhanan written, according to Schechter's opinion, by Samuel ben Ḥofni, and another letter of Samuel's to Kairwan, show the great efforts which at this time the last representative of the Babylonian schools had to make to maintain the ancient seats of learning in Babylonia. Samuel's responsa, written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic (those written in Arabic were translated into Hebrew), discuss tefillin, tzitzit, Shabbat and holidays, forbidden and permitted food (kashrut), women, priests, servants, property rights, and other questions of civil law. They consist chiefly of explanations of the Talmud and include some very short halakhic decisions, from which fact it is surmised that they are taken from his Talmud treatise "Sha'arei Berakhot". With the intellectual independence peculiar to him, he occasionally declares a Talmudic law to be without Biblical foundation, and when an explanation in the Talmud seems inadequate, he adds one of his own which is satisfactory.