Despite some discrepancies regarding his date of birth, it appears that Isaac ben Judah ibn Ghiyyāth was born in 1038 to a Jewish family that had long been settled in Lucena. During his lifetime, this city, with its almost entirely Jewish population, was part of the kingdom of Granada, under the rule of the Zirid monarch Bādīs b. Ḥabbūs (1038–74) and his grandson and successor ʿAbd Allāh (1073–90). Described in Jewish sources as “the city of poetry,” Lucena was home to the most renowned talmudic academy in al-Andalus.

Ibn Ghiyyāth had personal relationships with most of the Jewish …