Like Yehudai Gaon, he was opposed to the recitation of the Shema in the Kedushah. Historically this innovation arose when, Jacob Mann opined, Heraclius, breaking a promise he had made to the Jews, wrested sway over Palestine from the Sassanian Persians and their former Jewish allies, and proscribed recitation of the daily Tefillah and Shema. Since they were allowed only to congregate in their synagogues on the morning of the Sabbath to recite the Amidah and associated "piyyutim", the Hazzan or precentor adopted the subterfuge of smuggling the banned prayer in, intoning the first and last lines of the Shema in such away as to slip by the eavesdropping of government officials monitoring the session. Pirqoi ben Baboi repeated his stance of Yehudai Gaon that the raison d'être for such a novel practice had vanished with the Muslim conquest of Palestine, and the overthrow of Byzantine rule. Therefore, it was necessary to remove the Shema from the kedushah of the Shacharit Amidah, since under Arab rule it was now possible to return to the normal prayer practices in place prior to Christian Byzantium rule. Pirqoi ben Baboi nonetheless did not require that the Shema be removed from the Mussaf Kedushah, a widespread Jewish ritual in Babylonia and one that also preserved an innovation made at a time of persecution.