Isaac ben Solomon Israeli (ca. 855–ca. 955) was an accomplished physician and one of the earliest medieval Jewish philosophers. Although dismissed by Maimonides as “merely a physician” whose books were “futile and vain,” he introduced Neoplatonism into Jewish thought and by so doing had an influence on later developments in Jewish philosophy,

Born in Egypt, Israeli relocated to Qayrawan, where he was court physician to the Aghlabid amir and the Fatimid caliph. His books, intended by the childless Israeli as a guarantor of his immortality, include both medical treatises (on such su…