Jacob ben Eleazar was a prolific writer, poet, translator, grammarian, and philosopher in Christian Toledo and a member of one of the city’s distinguished families. Little is known about his life, but he was active during the first three decades of the thirteenth century and left several important works, among them a translation of the Arabic classic Kalīla wa-Dimna, a linguistic treatise written in Arabic, piyyuṭim , and two works on ethics.

Kalīla wa-Dimna is the Arabic version of the popular oriental collection of fables based upon the Indian tales of Bidpai. The …