Abraham Ibn Ezra was born in Toledo, Spain in 1089. In his youth, he studied all the branches of knowledge that Arabic and Jewish gifted (and well to do) youngsters could master, and was mainly known as a poet. Around 1140, he left Spain and wandered through Italy, southern France, and England. Also, legend says that in his old age he traveled to the Holy Land. During his itinerant life, Ibn Ezra met scores of scholars and wrote a number of works, of which his commentary on the Pentateuch and the Prophets in the most widely known.
He was a real polymath, who wrote on Hebrew philology (Moznei Leshon ha-Kodesh), translated several works on grammar from Arabic into Hebrew, and wrote on the calendar, mathematics (Sefer ha-Mispar, Book of the Number), and philosophy and ethics (Yesod Moraon the meaning of the commandments). He is considered one of the Jewish Neoplatonists, in particular regarding his description of the soul. In his view, intellectual perfection is the only way to enjoy a...
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Kottek, S.S. (2016). Abraham Ibn Ezra. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9381
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