Search

, 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 reputation of bei…

, a jewish mystic, pseudo-Messiah and the inspiration for a Judaeo-Muslim sect. Born at Izmir in 1035/1626, where his father, originally from the Peloponnese, was a trader, he showed a precocious propensity for the religious sciences, and was dedicated to a rabbinical career. From his adolescence, he devoted his time to the esoteric study of the Ḳabbālāh and led a life of abstinence and solitude. Thanks to his remarkable charisma, he became surrounded by a group of adepts whose extravagant practices ended u…