Abraham ibn Ezra

Abstract

Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra (c. 1093–c. 1167), a native of Tudela, has been a key figure of medieval Jewish thought. He has played an important role in the fields of biblical exegesis, poetry, grammar, astronomy, astrology, mathematics, and natural sciences. During his life, Ibn Ezra traveled all around Europe, settling in France, in England, and in Italy. He composed his works in Hebrew, in order to reach especially those Jewish communities that did not speak Arabic. His astrological and astronomical treatises were translated into Latin and were also greatly appreciated by medieval Christian thinkers. The popularity of his exegetical opus throughout the Jewish medieval world is testified by the great number of supercommentaries. Although Ibn Ezra’s philosophical teachings are not systematically exposed and have to be reconstructed all along his exegetical, poetical, and scientific production, his thought is characterized by some distinctive features. In the field of philosophy, he was mainly interested in psychological and cosmological questions. He accepted – and often reinterpreted – some earlier Neoplatonic and proto-cabalistic conceptions about the soul. His reflection mainly deals with the nature of the human soul and man’s destiny after death, and with the effects of celestial bodies on the physical world. Some doctrines that he adopted in those fields have deeply influenced the thought of his successors.