Me’ir (Abū ’l Ḥasan) ibn Qamni’el, born in Saragossa, belonged to one of the foremost Jewish families of Seville. What little information there is about his life comes largely from poems dedicated to him by Judah ha-Levi. These make it evident that the two were lifelong close friends. They seem to have first met when Ibn Qamni’el was quite young, as can be deduced from an allusion in Ha-Levi’s panegyric Lo’ He’emin Amun (Dîwân, vol. 1, pp. 127 ff.). The poem begins with a harsh satire of the leading families of Seville Jewry that juxtaposes their ignorance with Ibn …