Saʿadyā Ben Yōsēf

, Saʿīd (Abī) YaʿḲūb Yūsuf al-Fayyūmī (269-331/882-942), Jewish theologian, philosopher and philologist who wrote in Arabic, considered through his independence and breadth as the initiator of several Jewish intellectual disciplines, and a pioneer in mediaeval Jewish philosophy; he was one of the very few Jewish thinkers covered by the Arabic biographers (cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, i, 320).

1. Life

He was born at Dīlās in the province of Fayyūm in Egypt, but little is known of his youth except that his father, of humble origin, had the re…