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[German Version] (1089, Toledo – 1164, Rome). Ibn Ezra spent a number of years in Córdoba. Following the Almohad conquest, he was forced to leave Andalusia and lived in Italy, France, and England. As an itinerant poet, grammarian, Bible commentator, astronomer, and mathematician, he played a decisive role in the spreading of the prosody and poetic art of the Spanish school of Hebrew poetry. His Hebrew translations and writings familiarized the Jews of Christian Europe with Jewish-Arabic texts and the Arabic linguistic literature of the Middle Ages. Wout J. van Bekkum Bibliography W. Ba…

[German Version] (Abu Harūn; 1055, Granada – c.1135). Ibn Ezra wrote a large number of ¶ religious and secular poems that followed the conventional structure of medieval Arabic and Hebrew verse compositions. He is regarded as the first Jewish poet in Andalusia to have authored a book of homonymous poems in analogy to the Arabic style. His Judeo-Arabic prose writings on Hebrew verse earned him an important place as a theorist, critic, and literary historian. His Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa al-Muḍākara [Book of conversation and discussion] is the most comprehensive work on Hebrew p…

[German Version] Ibn Tibbon, family. The Tibbonids, the family of Ibn Tibbon, were a prominent dynasty of translators of Arabic and Judeo-Arabic works by Jewish authors into Hebrew. 1 The first translator is the physician Judah ben Saul Ibn Tibbon (1120–1190), who was born in Granada in Muslim Spain. He was driven out of Spain by the Almohades invasion and settled in Lunel around 1150. 2 His son Samuel ben Judah Ibn Tibbon (birth unknown – c. 1232) translated M. Maimonides, notably his Guide of the Perplexed in 1204, as well as Galen, Aristotle, and a Romance of Alexander the Gre…

[German Version] (Abū ʿAğūb Sulaimān ibn Yaḥyā ibn Gabirūl, Lat. Avicebron; c. 1021, Malaga – c. 1058, Valencia). Ibn Gabirol initially lived in Saragossa, where he enjoyed the patronage of Yequtiel Ibn Hassan Ibn Kabrūn and of other wealthy benefactors. He later moved to Valencia. He is known both as the author of secular and liturgical Hebrew poetry and as a Jewish Neo-Platonist (Neo-Platonism: III). Christian Scholastics knew him by the name Avicebron. His philosophical work Meqor Chayyim [The source of life] expounds the theory of creation based on the relationship b…

[German Version] (Abū Sahl Dūnash al-Shafaldij; Adonim; Qairawan, North Africa, c. 890 – c. 955). Ibn Tamim was known as a Hebrew grammarian and lexicographer. He studied under the philosopher and physician Israeli. His Judeo-Arabic commentary on the Book of Creation may have been influenced by Saadia Gaon in Babylonia. From quotations by many other grammarians it becomes clear that Ibn Tamim wrote a comparative lexicographic study of Hebrew and Arabic, sometimes including Aramaic words as well. Unfortunately, Ibn Tamim's lexicon is not extant. Wout J. van Bekkum Bibliography P. Fen…

[German Version] I. Origin and Spread – II. Doctrine – III. Islamic Philosophy – IV. Islamic Art (Architecture and Book Art) – V. Islamic Studies – VI. Christianity and Islam – VII. Judaism and Islam – VIII. Islam in Europe – IX. Islam in North America – X. Political Islamism I. Origin and Spread 1. Muḥammad and his message In 569 ce, Muḥammad was born in Mecca, a city with the shrine of the Kaʿba at its center. Mecca enjoyed good relations with the Sasanian Empire and its Arab vassal princes in Ḥīra, but considered itself politically independen…