Moses ibn Ezra

Known as Abu Harun Musa in Arabic, Moses ibn Ezra (c. 1060-1139) was a poet and philosopher. Born in Granada, he was educated in both Jewish and Arabic literature and theology. When Granada was captured by the Almoravids (the Berber Muslim dynasty), the Jewish quarter was destroyed and the community dispersed; ibn Ezra eventually fled to Christian Spain and remained in exile from his native city for the rest of his life.

Ibn Ezra was one of the most well-known, highly regarded, and prolific Hebrew poets of Spain. He wrote both secular and religious poetry, much of it formally innovative. His collection of secular poems Sefer ha-Anak, or Tarshish, is the first example of homonymic rhyme and was a model for other medieval poets. His penitential poems, or selihot, are introspective meditations on death and worldly vanity. He also wrote an early treatise on Hebrew poetics, Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa al-Mudhākara. Organized into eight sections, the work responds to eight questions a friend originally posed to ibn Ezra. The volume, which was translated into Hebrew by B.Z. Halper in 1924, also includes historical and biographical information on a range of Arabic, Castilian, and Jewish poets.