Ibn e arabic biography of abraham

Exceptionally erudite, he was among the last creative geniuses of the Spanish "golden age. He also lacked the requisite skills for business or public office, and therefore was unable to make a living in the accustomed professions of his social class — as a rabbi, dayyan , physician, businessman, or courtier.

Ibn arabi books pdf

For lack of alternative, he became a professional poet, supported by patrons who loved poetry and sought fame. Ibn Ezra's dependence on a succession of benefactors is evident in the exaggerated praise he showered on them in his eulogies. He did not, however, reach Egypt or the Land of Israel. His poetry e. Two of Ibn Ezra's poems, which are written in the first person, take the form of a father Abraham's elegy for his son Isaac, and refer explicitly to his death, but do not accord with the biographical and geographical facts in our possession regarding both Ibn Ezra and his son Isaac.

Ezra Fleischer's conclusion, that Ibn Ezra wrote these poems about other deceased acquaintances and not about his son Isaac, must therefore be accepted. There is, therefore, no evidence that Isaac died during his father's lifetime or that Ibn Ezra knew of Isaac's apostasy in Babylonia. Ibn Ezra accordingly wrote only his religious and secular poems in Hebrew many of which survived due to their popularity , but his Arabic works did not survive.

We only know of their existence because of references to them in some of his surviving works, such as in his Introduction to his commentary to Lamentations and in one of his poems. These references indicate that his Arabic writings included both science and Bible exegesis. However, when he reached the age of 50, around the year , his circumstances underwent a drastic change: for political reasons not entirely clear, he was forced to leave Muslim Spain and arrived alone in Rome a fact to which he refers in the poem at the beginning of the Introduction to his commentary to Ecclesiastes, written in During the remaining quarter century of his life he wandered among the Jewish communities of Italy, Provence, North Africa, and England.

Unlike the Jews of the Islamic countries, the Jews of Christian Europe did not know Arabic, and were, therefore, uninfluenced by Arabic science, philosophy, linguistics, and poetry.