Isaac ben Abraham ibn Ezra (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

יצחק אבן עזרא,

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

''Abu Sa'd Isḥaḳ ibn Ibrahim ibn al-Majid ibn Ezra'') is a

12th century The 12th century is the period from 1101 to 1200 in accordance with the Julian calendar. In the history of European culture, this period is considered part of the High Middle Ages and overlaps with what is often called the Golden Age' of the ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

from

Al-Andalus Al-Andalus () was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name refers to the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most o ...

Biography

The son of

Sephardic Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

Rabbi

Abraham ibn Ezra Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra (, often abbreviated as ; ''Ibrāhim al-Mājid ibn Ezra''; also known as Abenezra or simply ibn Ezra, 1089 / 1092 – 27 January 1164 / 23 January 1167)''Jewish Encyclopedia''online; '' Chambers Biographical Dictionar ...

, he was known as a poet early on in his life.

Yehuda al-Harizi Yehuda Alharizi, also Judah ben Solomon Harizi or al-Harizi (, ), was a rabbi, translator, poet, and traveler active in al-Andalus (mid-12th century Toledo, Spain? – 1225 in Aleppo, Ayyubid Syria). He was supported by wealthy patrons, to who ...

said of him in his work ''Tachemoni'': "like his father, Isaac also drew from the springs of poetry; and some of his father's brilliancy flashes in the songs of the son".Al-Harizi, Taḥkemoni, iii. It is believed that ben Abraham ibn Ezra left Spain around 1140 with his father. One account suggests that he traveled with his father-in-law, Jewish philosopher

Yehuda Halevi Judah haLevi (also Yehuda Halevi or ha-Levi; ; ; c. 1075 – 1141) was a Sephardic Jewish poet, physician and philosopher. Halevi is considered one of the greatest Hebrew poets and is celebrated for his secular and religious poems, many of whic ...

, in a boat en route to

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

. However, while Yehuda Halevi would settle in the

Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definition ...

, ben Abraham ibn Ezra would continue to

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

. While in Baghdad, he was the protégé of

Abu'l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī Abu'l-Barakāt Hibat Allah ibn Malkā al-Baghdādī (; c. 1080 – 1164 or 1165 CE) was an Islamic philosopher, physician and physicist of Jewish descent from Baghdad, Iraq. Abu'l-Barakāt, an older contemporary of Maimonides, was originally kno ...

(Nathanael), writing poems extolling the man and his commentary on

Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes ( ) is one of the Ketuvim ('Writings') of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Wisdom literature of the Christian Old Testament. The title commonly used in English is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word ...

. When al-Baghdadi

converted to Islam Reversion to Islam, also known within Islam as reversion, is adopting Islam as a religion or faith. Conversion requires a formal statement of the '' shahādah'', the credo of Islam, whereby the prospective convert must state that "there is none w ...

, Isaac ibn Ezra followed his example. Al-Harizi describes the conversion in ''Tachemoni'', saying, "But when he came into Eastern lands the glory of God no longer shone over him; he threw away the costly garments of Judaism, and put on strange ones". His father lamented the conversion in two

elegies An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

, one of which was written three years after his son's conversion.

Works

Ben Abraham ibn Ezra's poem for his teacher Hibat Allah and his commentary on Ecclesiastes have been preserved and edited.

Leopold Dukes Leopold Dukes (; 17 January 1810, Pozsony – 3 August 1891, Vienna) was a Hungarian critic of Jewish literature. Biography Dukes spent about 20 years in England, and from his researches in the Bodleian Library and the British Museum (which con ...

, in Kokheve Yitzhaq, xxiv. ; cf.

Steinschneider Moritz Steinschneider (; 30 March 1816 – 24 January 1907) was a Moravian bibliographer and Orientalist, and an important figure in Jewish studies and Jewish history. He is credited as having invented the term ''antisemitism.'' Education Mo ...

, ''Catalogus Librorum Hebræorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana'', vol. i. column 91, Berlin, 1852

References

{{Jewish Encyclopedia, title=IBN EZRA, ISAAC (ABU SA'D) 12th-century Spanish poets Poets from al-Andalus Converts to Islam from Judaism 12th-century writers from al-Andalus