## 1. al-Kindi



The traces of the 'influence' of al-Kindi (796-866) on
Medieval Judaic thought appear to have been rather scanty, apart from
some quotations and passages surely taken from his works, and from one
of them in particular; in any case they appeared to have been
substantially limited to the first period of it, when the influence of
Neoplatonism (or, better, of the first Arab-Islamic Aristotelianism,
where a key role was played by Plotinus and Proclus as interpreters of
metaphysics) shows to have been stronger. As a matter of fact, rather
than speaking of al-Kindi's influence on Judaic thought, one
should speak of a sort of Jewish "Kindism" through the
influence of some of al-Kindi's Arabic (in particular Christian
Arabic) followers (see below, 11).



The first traces of al-Kindi's influence have been found in
Jacob al-Qirqisani, a Karaite Jewish author living in Mesopotamia
(where al-Kindi himself was living one century before) in the first
half of the 10th century. In al-Qirqisani's main
published non-philosophical work, the *Book On the Lights and*
*On the Guard Towers* (*Kitab al-anwar wa-l-maraqib*), a
study of the legal parts of the Pentateuch, Georges Vajda identified
some passages of al-Kindi's *Epistle On the Quiddity of the
Sleep and the Vision* (*Risala fi mahiyya al-nawm
wa-l-ru'ya*), who al-Qirqisani would have employed for his
description of the concept of "sleep" (Vajda
1941-1945, 115-122). Other traces of a philosophical work
by al-Kindi, his *Epistle On the Cause Producing Ebb and Flow*
(*Risala fi l-'illa al-fa'ila li-l-madd
wa-l-jazr*), have been found by Bruno Chiesa in a passage about
the world's creation in al-Qirqisani's most important (and
still unpublished) theological-philosophical work, the *Book of
Gardens* (*Kitab al-riyad*), a study of the non-legal parts
of the Pentateuch (Chiesa 1989, 95). Of course, a complete analysis of
al-Qirqisani's own "philosophy", as found in the
latter work, is still needed, so that the real force of
al-Kindi's influence on his thought can be evaluated.



After al-Qirqisani, other traces of al-Kindi's philosophical
influence can be found in later Jewish thinkers. The most important of
them appears in Isaac Israeli, living in Egypt and Tunisia between ca.
850 and 950 (according to other scholars, between ca. 830 and 932).
One of Israeli's main philosophical works, his *Book of
Definitions* (*Kitab al-hudud*), is substantially a Jewish
adaptation of al-Kindi's work on the same subject, the
*Epistle On Definitions and Descriptions of Things* (*Risala
fi hudud al-ashya' wa-rusumiha*): Israeli adapted to the
Jewish readers and sometimes commented on a number of al-Kindi's
own definitions of philosophical and theological terms - as it
has been shown by Samuel Miklos Stern (Altmann and Stern 1958,
3-78). Israeli's employment of al-Kindi's philosophy
for building his own philosophical work appears to be the most
relevant case of al-Kindi's influence on Medieval Jewish
philosophy. A second case is that of Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera
(1225-1295 circa), a Spanish Jewish philosopher who wrote a
number of works by fitting quotations (translated into Hebrew and
occasionally adapted by him to his own use) from many Arabic sources:
in his *Balm for Sorrow* (*Seri ha-yagon*), he was
strongly influenced by, and inserted a number of quotations from,
al-Kindi's *On the Way of Dispelling Worry* (*Fi hila
li-daf' al-ahzan*), as proved by a number of scholars
(Ritter and Walzer 1938 [1943], Klugman-Barkan 1971). Apart from these
two cases, only very scanty traces of the knowledge of
al-Kindi's work have been found in Medieval Jewish philosophy:
one can mention a reference to al-Kindi's zoology found in Moses
Ibn Ezra's still unpublished philosophic-philological work, the
*Treatise of the Garden On the Metaphorical and the True Meanings
(of the Bible)* (*Maqala al-hadiqa fi ma'na l-majaz
wa-l-haqiqa*), written in Christian Spain around 1130 (see ms. of
Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library, 8deg 570, pages
206, line 8 - 207, line 7).


## 2. Abu Bakr al-Razi



The bad reputation of Abu Bakr al-Razi (850-925 circa) as a
"heterodox" and "unbelieving" philosopher of
Medieval Islam seems to have generally influenced most of the Medieval
Jewish authors, as it appears in particular in Maimonides. However,
this did not prevent some of them from quoting and employing some of
his works as sources for building their own thought.



As for Maimonides' harsh judgement of al-Razi as a philosopher,
it was clearly based upon the knowledge of the general contents of his
metaphysics and theology as found in al-Razi's *Book of
Divine Science* (*Kitab al-'ilm al-ilahi*), as found
both in his *Guide of the Perplexed* (*Dalalat
al-ha'irin*) and in one of his letters to the
"official" translator of his work, Samuel Ibn Tibbon. In
the latter, he affirms that al-Razi's book on *Divine
Science* is not useful, since al-Razi was only a physician (and
not a real philosopher) (Marx 1934-1935, 378; about the real
influence of Maimonides' letter, see also Harvey 1992). In part
three, chapter 12, of the *Guide*, in a more explicit way he
affirms that al-Razi's book is full of raving ideas and
ignorance: according to him, al-Razi thought that in human life there
is surely more evil than good, so that even the divine goodness should
be seriously questioned (Moses Maimonides 1963, 2:441-442).
Notwithstanding this, two other Jewish philosophers at least mentioned
al-Razi and employed some of his ideas. Moses Ibn Ezra, in chapter 5
of his *Treatise of the Garden*, quotes a passage of al-Razi
about motion and comments on it by affirming that al-Razi is contrary
to Aristotle's opinion and supports Plato's instead (see
ms. of Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library, 8deg 570,
page 51, lines 5-8). Abu l-Barakat Ibn Malka al-Baghdadi,
working in Baghdad around 1150, in his *Book about the Point of
View* (*Kitab al-mu'tabar*) -- mostly based upon
Avicenna's philosophy and possibly written before the
author's conversion to Islam - followed in some cases
al-Razi's doctrines, in particular his idea of two different
ideas of time, "eternal time" and "created
one" (see Pines 1979, 151-153).


## 3. The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa) and Their Followers



The scientific-philosophical Arabo-Islamic encyclopedia bearing the
title *Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and of the Lovers of
Faith* (*Rasa'il ikhwan al-safa' wa-khullan**al-wafa'*), which includes 52 treatises about
mathematical sciences, logic, physical sciences, metaphysics,
anthropology, and theology, had a relevant, although unexpected and
not usually studied influence on Medieval Judaic thought in the
11th-15th centuries in Spain and Provence, and
in Yemen as well.



According to a tradition, the encyclopedia, possibly written in the
Near East in the first half of the 9th century by a still
unknown author (maybe Abu-l Qasim Maslama al-Majriti, d. 964: see
Carusi 2000, 500-502), was known in Spain around 1050; as a
matter of fact, there might be some traces of its influence on Solomon
Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron, 1021-1058 or 1070), one of the most
well-known Medieval Jewish philosophers, living and working in
Andalusia in the first half of the 11th century. According
to Jacques Schlanger (see Schlanger 1968, 94-97), Ibn Gabirol
might have taken from the Brethren of Purity the correspondence
between the hierarchy of the beings and the series of the first ten
numbers, as well as the reference to the doctrine of some sages about
the necessity to "cultivate" our souls through the study
of celestial things. According to Georges Vajda (see Vajda 1947,
24-33), more relevant traces might be found in chapter two of
the *Introduction to the Duties of the Hearth* (*Hidaya ila
fara'id al-qulub*), written by the Spanish Jewish author
Bahya Ibn Paquda in the period 1050-1080, where there might be
some agreements with the Brethren's cosmological doctrines, as
well as a very similar style in defending them. As a matter of fact,
both these cases do not prove a direct use of the Brethren's
work by these two Jewish philosophers. The first sure traces of a
direct influence of the doctrines of the Brethren of Purity are found
in two works written in two different Spanish areas in Judaeo-Arabic
(the language of Jews living in Arabic countries) around 1130, and
possibly influencing each other: the *Book of Microcosm*
(*Kitab al-'alam al-sagir*) by Joseph Ibn Zaddiq (d.
1149), and the *Treatise of the Garden* by Moses Ibn Ezra. The
original text of the work by Joseph Ibn Zaddiq, a rabbinical judge
living in Cordoba, is lost, but an anonymous Medieval Hebrew
translation is still preserved in some manuscripts, and has been
published twice. It includes a number of evident but not literal
references to the doctrines of the Brethren of Purity (see Vajda
1949), and its relationship to them was implicitly admitted by the
author himself at the very beginning of his work, as follows:
"It seems to me that the way for arriving to this great and
terrible knowledge (i.e. that of theological truths) consists in
understanding the books written by the pure philosophers and the
divine sages" (Horovitz 1903, 3). Moreover, in his letter to
Samuel Ibn Tibbon Maimonides explicitely affirmed: "I have not
read Joseph Ibn Zaddiq's *Microcosm*, but I know the
author, his value and the value of his book: surely he follows the
ideas of the Brethren of Purity" (Marx 1934-1935, 379)
- an affirmation which, according to Sarah Stroumsa, should be
interpreted as a substantial critique to Ibn Zaddiq's
philosophical views (Stroumsa 1990). As for Moses Ibn Ezra, his
*Treatise of the Garden* is clearly full of references to
passages and doctrines indirectly inspired by, and in some cases
literally taken from the Brethren of Purity. As recently shown by Paul
Fenton in his book about the contents of Ibn Ezra's work (Fenton
1997; see also Fenton 1976, 297), the *Treatise of the Garden*
includes at least thirty-six passages of the *Epistles of the*
*Brethren* *of* *Purity*, as well as a number of
cases where their influence appears to be rather evident. For example,
the Brethren of Purity clearly influenced Ibn Ezra's doctrines
about the creation of the world from the First Intellect and the
procession of the beings from God to matter, about nature as a power
of the Universal Soul, as well as about man as a microcosm. In the
same period, even Abraham Ibn Ezra, the well-known Spanish Jewish
author and scientist active in Italy, France and England in the period
1140-1160, knew and employed the Brethren of Purity (see Jospe
1994, 46-48).



Possibly as a consequence of the diffusion of the above works, the
influence of the Brethren of Purity seems to have spread among a
number of Jewish philosophers working in Spain during the
13th century. In some cases, this influence passed through
other minor Arab-Islamic authors, whose work was well-known among
Spanish Jewish readers. The Spanish Islamic philosopher Ibn al-Sid
al-Batalyawsi (from Badajoz, d. 1127) wrote a sort of compendium of
the Brethren's doctrines, the *Book of the Gardens*
(*Kitab al-hada'iq*), which was widespread among Jewish
authors (Kaufmann 1880, 32-63) either in its original Arabic
text, or in its three Medieval Hebrew translations (written between
1200 and 1370: see Steinschneider 1893, 286-288; Richler 1977),
often under the title *Book of Intellectual Circles* (*Sefer
ha-'agullot ha-re'yoniyyot*); it was one of the direct
sources of a Spanish philosopher and kabbalist, Isaac Ibn Latif, who
spoke about the Brethren's doctrine of the five degrees of soul
(vegetal, animal, human, sapiential, prophetical) in his Hebrew book
*The Gate of Heavens* (*Sha'ar ha-shamayim*),
written in the period 1230-1250 (see Heller-Wilensky 1967, 199).
Another anonymous work, *The* *Balance* *of*
*Speculations* (*Me'ozney ha-'iyyunim*),
written in Hebrew (or in a Judaeo-Arabic lost original version) in
13th-century Spain, is full of passages about numerology,
cosmology, theology and natural sciences: some of them might have been
inspired by al-Batalyawsi's compendium, but some others were
evidently taken from the *Epistle of the Brethren of Purity*,
in particular those concerning the essence of faith, mineralogy and
botany (Abrahamov 1995). Finally, it should be noted that the Brethren
of Purity were employed as a direct philosophical source by Shem Tov
Ibn Falaquera in a number of occasions. In his Neoplatonic
philosophical anthology, *The* *Book* *of*
*Degrees* (*Sefer ha-ma'alot*), a Hebrew quotation
ascribed to a "sage" (did Falaquera know that the work was
made by al-Majriti?) is in reality a literal passage of the
*Epistle of the Brethren of Purity* dealing with the
relationship between the Universal Soul and the particular souls.
Falaquera's *The* *Book* *of* *the*
*Seeker* (*Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh*), a sort of short popular
encyclopedia written in 1263, is full of quotations from most of the
Brethren's treatises: these quotations deal with several themes,
like the difference between science and faith, some mathematical
questions, the principles of astronomy and music, the meaning of the
term "nature", the doctrine of *anima mundi*, the
climates, as well as some doctrines about logic, meteorology, music
(about this point, see Shiloah 1968), astrology and natural sciences,
and even some moral tales. Also the Brethren's scientific
doctrines exerted a considerable influence over
13th-century Jewish authors. In books three and four of his
bulky scientific-philosophical encyclopedia, *The*
*Opinions* *of* *the* *Philosophers*
(*De'ot ha-filosofim*), written around 1270 and still
unpublished, Falaquera quotes a number of passages of the Brethren
concerning mineralogy and botany, where a sort of mixture of
Aristotelian doctrines and alchemy can be found. Falaquera's
mineralogical doctrines should have directly influenced the treatment
of mineralogy in other Hebrew texts, written around 1300, in
particular in Gershom ben Solomon of Arles' *The Gate of
Heavens* and in an alchemical treatise falsely ascribed to an
Arabic author. Finally, the zoology and the mathematics of the
Brethren of Purity were employed by Qalonymos ben Qalonymos for
writing down his own Hebrew books on morals (*Epistle On
Animals*, *Iggeret ba'aley hayyim*) and on
mathematics (*Book of Kings*, *Sefer ha-melakim*: see
Levy 1996, 69).



The supposed connection between the *Epistle of the Brethren of
Purity* and the Ismailism should have suggested the adoption of
this work as one of the main sources of the so-called "Jewish
Ismailism" as found in Late Medieval Yemenite Judaism. This
"Jewish Ismailism" consisted in adapting to Judaism some
Ismaili doctrines about cosmology, prophecy, and hermeneutics (Kiener
1984). There are a number of cases showing that the Brethren of Purity
influenced some Yemenite Jewish philosophers and authors in the period
1150-1550 (Langermann 1996). For example, chapter two of the
Judaeo-Arabic theologic-philosophical work by Natanael Ibn al-Fayyumi,
the *Garden of Intellects* (*Bustan al-'uqul*),
written in Yemen in 1165, includes a correspondence between numbers
1-10 and ten scientific and philosophical concepts (soul's
faculties, senses, directions, bodily substances and parts, etc.) most
of which are identical to those listed by the Brethren of Purity. Some
traces of the Brethren's doctrine of the procession of beings
from the First Intellect, as well as of their numerology, are found in
two Yemenite philosophical *midrashim*, i.e. Judaeo-Arabic
interpretations of Biblical texts, written in 1420-1430: the
*Glad Learning* (*Midrash ha-hefez*) by Zerahyah
ha-Rofe (Yahya al-Tabib) and the *Lamp of Intellects*
(*Siraj al-'uqul*) by Hoter ben Solomon (Mansur ibn
Sulayman al-Dhamari) (see Blumenthal 2007).


## 4. al-Farabi



The 'influence' of the Arabic "second Master"
(i.e. the second Aristotle), Abu Nasr al-Farabi (870-950), is evident
in many fields of Medieval Jewish philosophy: epistemology, logic,
metaphysics and theology, ethics, and even physics.



As for epistemology, al-Farabi's major work on it, the
*Enumeration of Sciences* (*Ihsa'
al-'ulum*), about the general contents of linguistics,
logic, mathematical sciences, physics and metaphysics, ethics and even
Islamic jurisprudence and religion, exerted an important influence
over a number of Jewish scholars in the period 1200-1400. Joseph
ben Judah Ibn 'Aqnin (d. 1226), a Moroccan Jewish follower of
Maimonides, inserted long sections of the original Arabic text in
chapter 27 of his main ethical work, *The Medicine of Souls*
(*Tibb al-nufus*); in his commentary on the *Song of
Songs*, *The* *Revealing of Secrets* (*Inkishaf
al-asrar*), he quoted a number of other Farabian works on
epistemology, logic, metaphysics, and even music. Shem Tov Ibn
Falaquera inserted a number of its passages (in Hebrew) into his own
"enumeration of sciences", part two of the *Beginning
of Science* (*Reshit hokhmah*), probably written around
1250 (Efros 1935; Strauss 1936; about Falaquera's knowledge of
al-Farabi's works, see Harvey 2002). Qalonymos ben Qalonymos
translated the whole work into Hebrew in 1314, together with another
short "introduction to Aristotle" by al-Farabi himself;
rather significantly, he himself inserted into it his own treatment of
some subjects which were lacking in the original Arabic text, very
probably since al-Farabi rejected them as real sciences: medicine,
alchemy, magic. Qalonymos' version was later quoted by some
Jewish scholars, mainly during the 14th and 15th
centuries. As far as philosophy in general is concerned, it should be
noted that Falaquera made a sort of complete Hebrew abridgement of
three main works by al-Farabi, and inserted them into part three of
the *Beginning of Science*: the *Attainment of
Happiness* (*Tahsil al-sa'ada*), the *Philosophy
of Plato* (*Falsafa Aflatun*) and the *Philosophy of
Aristotle* (*Falsafa Aristu*), so spreading among Jews the
knowledge of the general contents of all works by Plato and Aristotle
(Strauss 1936; see also Mahdi 1962). Falaquera also quoted a short
introductory passage of al-Farabi's *Epistle On the Knowledge
of Philosophy* in his *Book of Degrees* (as pointed out in
Chiesa and Rigo 1993).



As for logic, al-Farabi even exerted a stronger influence over
Medieval Jewish philosophy, which was apparently almost like that
exerted by the most highly reputed, "official" commentator
of Aristotelian logic: Averroes. According to Maimonides, there was no
need to study logical texts, apart from those by al-Farabi, since
"all that he wrote... is full of wisdom, and... he was
a very valid author" (Marx 1934-1935, 379). Surely,
al-Farabi's logical (and also non-logical) works influenced the
*Treatise On the Art of Logic* (*Maqala fi sina'a
al-mantiq*) usually ascribed to Maimonides, and probably written
around 1160 (see Brague 1996; Maimonides' authorship has been
recently challenged by Davidson 2005, 313-322): this text was
thrice translated into Hebrew in the 13th and
14th centuries and was obviously widespread among Jewish
readers in the Late Middle Ages. As a matter of fact, almost all his
logical works were either translated into Hebrew, or at least widely
employed by a number of Medieval Jewish philosophers in the
13th-15th centuries (among the others, by Samuel
Ibn Tibbon in his *Commentary on the Difficult Terms*
[*Perush ha-millot ha-zarot*]: Robinson 2009), although the
real extent of his influence on Jewish logic has not yet been examined
in all its aspects. As for the many Hebrew translations of his
summaries or "short commentaries" on Porphyry's
*Isagoge* and Aristotle's *Organon*, probably five
groups of these translations (not covering the whole series of the
summaries) can be identified: some translations were made very early,
possibly before 1200; some others should be ascribed to a Spanish Jew,
Moses Ibn Lagis; some others were made by members of the family of the
Ibn Tibbons, during the 13th century, and were often
employed as sources by some 14th- and
15th-centuries Jewish philosophers (Judah ben Isaac Cohen,
Abraham Avigdor); other translations consisted in revisions of the
Tibbonian ones, were made before 1320 and were surely known to
Hezekiah bar Halafta (see below, 7); finally, two translations (the
only ones of al-Farabi's summaries of Aristotle's
*Rhetoric* and *Poetics*) were probably made by Todros
Todrosi, a philosophical translator working in Arles, around 1330
(about all these translations, see Zonta 1996, 189-193). In
particular, al-Farabi's summary of the *Categories* was
quoted and commented on by an otherwise unknown Jewish philosopher,
Sar Shalom, possibly active in Provence around 1300 (Zonta 1997b,
523). Also some of al-Farabi's "long commentaries"
(*tafasir*) on Aristotle's logic, even those now lost in
their Arabic original text, can be shown to have influenced Jewish
philosophers: the *Long Commentary on Categories* is preserved
almost only due to the many quotations made by a Late Medieval Jewish
author, Judah ben Isaac Cohen, and has very recently been published
(Zonta 2006a); the *Long Commentary on De interpretatione*,
found in Arabic, was translated into Hebrew before 1334 (the text of
its introduction in Hebrew is still extant) and appears to have
influenced Gersonides too (Glasner 2002, 252-254); many passages
from the *Long Commentary on Book Eight of Topics*, lost in
Arabic, were translated into Hebrew by Todros Todrosi in 1334. As
proved by Georges Vajda (Vajda 1965), Maimonides knew and implicitely
employed al-Farabi's summary of *Topics*, book one,
chapter 11, as a source of a passage of his *Guide of the
Perplexed*, part two, chapter 25, concerning a discussion between
the two different doctrines of the eternity of the world according to
Aristotle and Plato; he also knew and paraphrased some passages from
other logical works by al-Farabi (the summary of *De
interpretatione*, the *Long Commentary on Prior Analytics*:
see Davidson 2005, 113-114).



As for al-Farabi's most famous work, the *Book of the
Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City* (*Kitab ara'
ahl al-madina al-fadila*), apart from some short quotations found
in Moses Ibn Ezra's *Treatise of the Garden* (Fenton
1976, 297) and in Isaac Ibn Latif's above mentioned work (Chiesa
1986, 80), the most relevant employment of this text as a source for
metaphysics and theology is found in Falaquera's *Book of
Degrees* and in particular in book ten of his encyclopedia *The
Opinions of the Philosophers*, where his general treatment of the
nature of God mixed up al-Farabi's and Averroes' opinions
about it (Chiesa 1986, 81-84). Al-Farabi's *Virtuous
City* appears to have been ignored by most of Medieval Jewish
philosophers: as a matter of fact, Moses Ibn Tibbon did not translate
it into Hebrew, but preferred to translate al-Farabi's *The
Political Regimen* (*al-Siyasa al-madaniyya*) instead
(Steinschneider 1893, 290-292) - another Farabian text
known and quoted by Falaquera (Plessner 1956, 189-193).
According to Pines, although al-Farabi's former work is not
explicitely quoted in the *Guide of the Perplexed*, it was
surely among the main sources of Maimonides' doctrine about the
different roles played by the philosopher and by the prophet (see
Moses Maimonides 1962, 1:lxxxvii-xcii). Al-Farabi's idea about
the relationship between philosophy and religion, according to which
the former is in a substantially higher position with respect to the
latter, as found in his *Book on Letters* (*Kitab
al-huruf*) and *Book on Religion* (*Kitab
al-milla*), strongly influenced Maimonides' ideas about this
(see Berman 1974); moreover, the *Book on Letters* was later
employed as a source for Falaquera's treatment of linguistics in
his *Beginning of Science*. According to Davidson, Maimonides
explicitly quoted and employed al-Farabi's *Political
Regime* under the title *The Changing Beings*
(*al-Mawjudat al-mutaghayyira*) for discussing the question of
the world's eternity in part two, chapter 74, of the
*Guide* (Davidson 2005, 113). It should be noted that European
Jewish philosophers active in the 13th and 14th
centuries show even more interest in another work by al-Farabi: his
treatise *On the Intellect* (*Risala fi l-'aql*).
This interest was apparently raised by Maimonides, who quoted and
commented on some passages of this book about the theologians'
idea of the human intellect and the role of the active intellect in
his *Guide* (see what has been written by Pines in Moses
Maimonides 1962, 1:lxxxii-lxxxiii). As recently shown by Gad
Freudenthal, at least three Arabic-into-Hebrew versions of the work
(one by Qalonymos ben Qalonymos, and two anonymous) were written, read
and in one case at least commented on in Western Europe between about
1150 and 1320 (Freudenthal 2003). Moreover, Farabian doctrines (if not
direct references to al-Farabi's works) about some key concepts
of metaphysics and theology (the First Cause, the prophecy, etc.) were
still circulating in Spain around 1350 (see Vajda 1962, 216-217,
where these doctrines are found in Joseph Ibn Waqqar's work).




As for ethics, the first traces of al-Farabi's doctrine about
the difference between the philosophers and inferior classes of men
are found in Abraham bar Hiyya (Vajda 1938). However,
al-Farabi's affirmation, as found in his lost commentary on
Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics*, about human moral
perfection and its connection to an intellectual perfection apparently
limited to man's life in this world seems to have influenced
Maimonides' idea of perfection as found in part three, chapter
18, of the *Guide of the Perplexed* (Moses Maimonides 1962,
1:lxxix-lxxxii; Davidson 2005, 113). Other ethical works by al-Farabi,
the *Epistle of the Guide to the Way of Happiness* (*Risala
fi l-tanbih 'ala sabil al-sa'ada*) and the
*Selected Aphorisms* (*Fusul muntaza'a*), were
also both translated into Hebrew, probably around 1300, and quoted by
some Jewish philosophers: Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera (Plessner 1956,
179-183), Qalonymos ben Qalonymos, Josef Ibn 'Aqnin
(Steinschneider 1893, 290-292).



According to Yair Shiffman, a lost work by al-Farabi on physics, his
*Long Commentary on Aristotle's Physics*, was also
implicitly quoted by Falaquera in his *Guide to the Guide*
(*Moreh ha-Moreh*), a philosophical commentary on
Maimonides' *Guide* written in 1280 (Shem Tov Ibn
Falaquera 2001, 234); as a matter of fact, a passage of it about the
formal and material differences between the heavens and the stars is
explicitly quoted and commented on by Maimonides himself in chapter 19
of part two of the *Guide of the Perplexed* (see Moses
Maimonides 1962, 2:239).


## 5. Avicenna



The main reason for the interest of a number of Medieval Jewish
philosopher towards Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037) might have
been Avicenna's own interest in a tentative conciliation between
Aristotelian philosophy and religion (see Harvey 2009). Such interest
was due to the philosopher's special attitude towards Islam, and
towards Shi'ite Islam in particular, an attitude which the
Avicennian Jewish philosophers obviously applied to Judaism. It seems
that these philosophers regarded Avicenna as a substantial defender of
religion over philosophy, so associating him with al-Ghazali's
own position with regard to philosophy. In this way, "Jewish
Avicennism" was slowly absorbed into a sort of "Jewish
Ghazalism", aiming at a defense of Judaism against Averroism
(see below, 6). However, according to a more recent, in-depth, and
wider examination of all the extant Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew materials
about Avicenna as philosopher, mystic, and physician in the Jewish
Middle Ages, it is evident that, among Jewish philosophical authors,
the 'committed Avicennians' were really few, while the
'eclectic Avicennians', who employed a number of more or
less Avicennian ideas, were very many - even if some of them did
not read Avicenna directly (Freudenthal and Zonta 2012).



Avicenna was the main source of an important doctrine which spread
among a number of 11th- and 12th-century Jewish
philosophers, as once shown by Harry A. Wolfson (Wolfson 1935):
according to this doctrine, there are in man's mind five
internal senses (common sense, estimation, imagination, thought, and
memory). A first trace of this doctrine was found in Bahya Ibn Paquda:
however, he might have taken it from an Arabic philosophical or
theological compendium inspired by Avicenna. Such occasional
employment of Avicenna as a source for one particular point of a
Medieval Jewish philosopher's thought might have happened in the
case of Joseph Ibn Zaddiq's *Book of the Microcosm*, as
observed by Vajda in his study about the philosophical sources of the
latter (see Vajda 1949, 180). A more important case is that of the
well-known Spanish Jewish author Judah Halevi (1085-1141). In
his main Judaeo-Arabic work, the *Book of the Khazar* (in
Hebrew, *Sefer ha-Kuzari*), an explicit defence of Judaism with
respect to the other religions and to philosophy as well, he
significantly employed Avicenna's *Epistle On the Soul*
(*Risala fi l-nafs*) as a direct and literal, albeit implicit
source for his description of man's soul in chapter 12 of book
five, as definitively shown by David H. Baneth (see his introduction
to Judah Halevi 1977). Also a more "mystical" work by
Avicenna, *Living Son of the Watchful* (*Hayy ibn
Yaqzan*), apparently inspired Abraham Ibn Ezra in writing his own
work in Hebrew on the same subject, the *Iggeret Hay ben
Meqits* (around 1150), as shown by Israel Levin (see Levin
1983).



In any case, a wider influence of Avicenna's philosophy on
Medieval Judaic thought appeared after 1150. The first significant
case is that of Abraham Ibn Daud, living in Toledo between 1110 and
1180 circa. As it is clear from his philosophical work, the
*Exalted Faith* (*al-'Aqida al-rafi'a*, lost
in its Judaeo-Arabic original, but preserved in two
14th-century Hebrew translations), he was the first Jewish
Aristotelian, but surely employed as his main sources both Avicenna
and al-Ghazali. As shown in recent studies by Amira Eran, and in
particular in her book about the contents of Ibn Daud's work
(Eran 1998, 27), Avicennian influences appear mostly in book one of
the *Exalted Faith*, where such philosophical themes as
categories, matter and motion, souls and celestial bodies are studied.
However, in treating these themes, Ibn Daud did not directly refer to
the contents of Avicenna's main extant encyclopedia, *The
Cure* (*al-Shifa'*), but to his minor encyclopedia of
logic, physics and metaphysics: *The Salvation*
(*al-Najat*). Moreover, it might be suggested that in reality
instead Ibn Daud employed al-Ghazali as his main source for
constructing his own "Avicennism" rather than Avicenna
himself (see below, 6), just as a number of later Medieval Jewish
philosophers did, beginning with Maimonides. Maimonides appears to
have regarded Avicenna not as a really direct and important
philosophical source. Although clear echoes of Avicennian doctrines
about the distinction between essence and existence, between necessary
and contingent beings, as well as the well-known Avicennian proof of
the existence of God, have been found in the *Guide of the
Perplexed* (see Moses Maimonides 1962, 1:xciii-ciii), the explicit
judgement of Maimonides about Avicenna's thought appears to be
substantially cool (for a different interpretation of this judgement,
see however Dobbs-Weinstein 2002). In his letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon,
he affirms that "Avicenna's books, although they are
subtle and difficult, are not like those by al-Farabi; however, they
are useful, and he too is an author whose words should be studied and
understood" (Marx 1934-1935: 380).



Maimonides' lukewarm judgement about Avicenna did not prevent
many later Jewish scholars from studying his works and employing them
as sources for their own philosophy. Even the translator of
Maimonides' *Guide*, Samuel Ibn Tibbon, directly referred
to Avicenna's doctrines and affirmations about meteorology both
in his Hebrew translation (including some comments) of
Aristotle's *Meteorology*, and in his work *Treatise
on "Waters Did Gather"* (*Ma'amar be-yiqqawu
ha-mayim*), as shown by Resianne Fontaine in her critical edition
and English translation of the former (Fontaine 1995); this Jewish
philosopher can be even tentatively seen as a 'committed
Avicennian'. Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera, whose many works appear to
have been a sort of "basin of quotations", referred to a
number of Avicenna's philosophical works, and employed them as
sources for his own expositions of Maimonides' and
Aristotle's thought, in the *Guide to the Guide* and in
the *Opinions of the Philosophers*, as well as for some other
minor works. In particular, he quoted some passages from *The
Cure* about celestial bodies, mineralogy, zoology, psychology, and
metaphysics; he quoted a number of passages of *The Salvation*
about logic and psychology; he made an abridgement of the contents of
the *Epistle On the Soul*; he even quoted short passages from
Avicenna's *Remarks and Admonitions* (*al-Isharat
wa-l-tanbihat*); finally, Avicenna was probably one of the main
sources for Falaquera's philosophical dictionary, put at the
beginning of the *Opinions of the Philosophers*, as well as for
his own classification of sciences in part two of the *Beginning of
Wisdom*. The influence of Avicenna on Jewish scientific thought
continued after 1300: for example, some traces of it are found also in
the Hebrew paraphrase of a pseudo-Avicennian work, made by a
Provencal Jewish scholar, Solomon ben Moses of Melgueil (d.
between 1306 and 1309) (see Glasner 1996).



Probably, an important case of eclectic "Jewish
Avicennism" appeared in 14th-century Provence and
Spain. Its main character was the employment of some aspects of
Avicenna's philosophy in favor of the Jewish religious tradition
- although this aspects are not evidently employed against the
Aristotelian philosophical tradition as represented by Averroes'
rationalism. As a matter of fact, some of these eclectic "Jewish
Avicennians" tried to arrive at a substantial agreement between
Jewish religion and philosophy; some others might have had an opposite
effect, as happened for example in the case of Abner of Burgos.



Judah ben Solomon Natan, a physician and translator active in Provence
around 1330, explicitly declared the reason for his interest in
Avicenna in the introduction to his Hebrew translation of
al-Ghazali's *Intentions of the Philosophers*
(*Maqasid al-falasifa*), where he affirmed that he translated
that book since it was very useful for reconciling religious tradition
and philosophy, and he found a substantial correspondence between that
book and some parts of Avicenna's *The Cure* about
physics and metaphysics, as well as Avicenna's *The
Salvation*. Judah Natan's translation was employed by his
friend Todros Todrosi for his own translation of the
"Avicennist" work *The Sources of Questions*
(*'Uyun al-masa'il*): in the introduction to the
latter, he affirms to have found there the same opinion expressed in
al-Ghazali's above mentioned book. Here and in his philosophical
anthology (dating back to 1334) Todros quoted some of Avicenna's
passages about logical, physical and metaphysical questions: he took
them both from the logical sections of *The Cure* (he also
quoted a passage about infinite motion from book three, chapter 8 of
the physical section of this work), and from Avicenna's
*Remarks and Admonitions*. Finally, he was the unique Medieval
Hebrew author who wrote an almost complete translation of one of
Avicenna's philosophical works: books two and three of *The
Salvation*, about physics and metaphysics. Two other
Provencal Jewish authors employed Avicenna: Judah Cohen, who
might have been active in Provence around 1350, was apparently
inspired by Avicenna's *Epistle On Love* (*Risala fi
l-'ishq*) (Vajda 1977, 136); the well-known Jewish
philosopher and commentator of Averroes Moses Narboni, living there in
the period 1300-1360, occasionally quoted some passage from
*The Cure* and *The Salvation* in his own
"Averroistic" commentary on the *Intentions of the
Philosophers* (Steinschneider 1893, 318). Various approaches to
Avicenna are found in 13th- and 14th-century
Spain: Avicenna's metaphysics was the main source of Moses
ha-Levi's *Metaphysical* (lit.
"divine")*Treatise* (*Maqala ilahiyya*),
written in Judaeo-Arabic probably before 1300, whose contents were
studied in detail by Vajda (see Vajda 1948) - here there is one
of the few cases of 'committed Avicennism'; the Jewish
philosopher Abner of Burgos (1270-1350 circa), both before and
after having converted to Christianity, seems to have often employed
Avicenna in favor of determinism and against Averroes (he claims to
have transmitted some lost passages of Avicenna's *The
Oriental Wisdom* [*al-Hikma al-mashriqiyya*]; but see
Szpiech 2010); Josef Ibn Waqqar, in his *Treatise for Reconciling
Philosophy and Religious Law* (*Maqala al-jami'a bayna
l-falsafa wa-l-shari'a*), written in Judaeo-Arabic around
1360 and analyzed by Vajda, even tried to reconcile Averroes, Avicenna
and al-Ghazali in a very difficult field: metaphysics (Vajda 1962,
132). In a different, indirect way the Neoplatonic circle of Jewish
authors of Hebrew supercommentaries on Abraham Ibn Ezra's
Biblical commentaries, active in Spain in the second half of the
14th century and in Provence in the first decades of the
15th century, could have employed Avicennian ideas for
defending the doctrine of astral determinism (see Schwartz 1996);
still indirectly, Avicenna's thought might have influenced some
aspect of Hasdai Crescas' philosophy (see below, 6). According
to Dov Schwartz, the role played by Avicenna in influencing some
aspects of 14th- and also 15th-century Judaic
thought was even more widespread than that played by Averroes, who was
until now regarded as the most important "master" in Late
Medieval Jewish philosophy after Maimonides (Schwartz 1995, 420).


## 6. al-Ghazali



Remarkably, there are clues that even the main representative of
Arab-Islamic Sunnite theology, al-Ghazali (1058-1111), exerted an
important 'influence' over some aspects of Medieval Jewish
philosophy and thought. This fact has not yet been systematically
studied and explained by scholars, but it cannot be easily neglected.
Moreover, in the 14th century there was apparently a sort
of "Jewish Ghazalism", based upon al-Ghazali's works
(both philosophical and theological ones), so that many aspects of his
thought as a typical Islamic thinker were curiously employed for
defending some similar aspects of Jewish religious tradition.



The first sure traces of an influence of al-Ghazali on Judaic thought
appeared rather early, around 1160, when Abraham Ibn Daud employed his
major philosophical work, *The Intentions of the Philosophers*,
as one of the main unavowed sources of his *Exalted Faith* (see
Eran 1998, 27). Significantly enough, al-Ghazali's work
influenced not only the contents of book one of the *Exalted
Faith*, about some aspects of Aristotelian philosophy (logic,
physics, and metaphysics), but also book two of it, about theology
(God's incorporeity, unity, attributes, as well as divine
creation, prophecy, and providence). Possibly, al-Ghazali might have
exerted a similar influence over Maimonides too, and over his
philosophical thought in particular. As a matter of fact, there are no
direct and explicit mentions of al-Ghazali either in the *Guide of
the Perplexed* or in Maimonides' above mentioned letter to
Samuel Ibn Tibbon; but some traces of Avicennian doctrines in some of
Maimonides' works (both in the *Guide* and in other ones)
could also be explained as the results of an influence of Avicenna by
means of al-Ghazali, and of the latter's *Intentions of the
Philosophers* in particular, as pointed out by Herbert Davidson
and other scholars (Davidson 2005, 104; see also Pines 1971, 958; for
a particular case-study, see Eran 2001). Davidson, in particular,
affirms that "virtually every of a metaphysical character
attributed by Maimonides to Aristotle but actually deriving from
Avicenna was available to him through Ghazali": according to
him, there are striking similarities, even in some points of the
phraseology, between Maimonides and al-Ghazali, about these points
(Davidson 2004, 732; see also Davidson 2005, 115).



Direct and explicit proofs of the influence of al-Ghazali on Medieval
Jewish philosophy appeared in Spain and Provence from 1270 onwards.
The first case is found in Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera's *Book of
Degrees*, two passages of which were surely taken from the
*Intentions of the Philosophers* (Chiesa 1986, 86). The second
and more important case is that of Isaac Albalag, a Catalan or
Provencal Jewish philosopher who first translated the work into
Hebrew, and then commented on it in his work *Correction of the
Opinions (of the Philosophers)* (*Tiqqun ha-de'ot*),
written at the end of the 13th century. As shown by Vajda,
who published a critical edition of Albalag's commentary and
studied its philosophical contents in detail (Vajda 1960, Yishaq
Albalag 1973), he did not employ al-Ghazali for defending him, but for
criticizing him instead: contrary to al-Ghazali, Albalag even seems to
have adopted the doctrine of the existence of two truths, the
philosophical one (reserved for wise and experienced philosophers) and
the religious one (reserved for common people). After Albalag, in the
first half of the 14th century al-Ghazali's
*Intentions* were translated into Hebrew in Provence twice: by
Judah Natan, who allegedly wrote this translation for refuting the
arguments of the "philosophists" (in Hebrew,
*mitfalsefim*), i.e. the Averroists (see above, 5); and by an
anonymous translator, possibly identical to, or working for, Moses
Narboni. As a matter of fact, Narboni commented on the
*Intentions* in a totally different, substantially Averroist
way (see Steinschneider 1893, 311-319). Other evident proofs of
the direct influence of al-Ghazali's philosophical work on
14th-century Judaic thought are found in some Spanish
authors, active after 1350, for example in Moses ben Judah's
philosophical encyclopedia, *The Love of (Intellectual)
Pleasures* (*Ahavah ba-ta'anugim*), written in 1354
(Eisenmann 2000). In 15th-century Spain and even later,
many commentaries, mostly on the metaphysical section of the
*Intentions*, were written by some philosophers (Isaac Ibn Shem
Tov, Eli Habillo, Moses Almosnino, and some anonymous authors): they
were identified by Steinschneider (Steinschneider 1893, 320-325)
but are still in need of a deeper study. This wide employment of
al-Ghazali's work as a philosophical source might be explained
as an easier way to the knowledge of the general contents of
Aristotelian logic, physics, and metaphysics (see Harvey 2001).



However, al-Ghazali's *Intentions* was not his only work
known and employed as a source by Late Medieval Jewish authors. They
were surely influenced by other two philosophical works by him about
logic: *The Balance of Knowledge* (*Mi'yar
al-'ilm*) and *The Touchstone of Intellect*
(*Mihakk al-nazar*). Both were explicitly quoted by Todros
Todrosi in his philosophical anthology, and the first of them,
possibly translated into Hebrew before the end of the 15th
century, was surely employed as a source by two Jewish philosophers,
Zerahyah Hen (active in Rome, 1277-1290) and Moses Narboni. Some
of these authors, mostly living in the Northern Spanish area, knew and
employed some of al-Ghazali's ethical and even theological works
(see Steinschneider 1893, 328-330, 342-347): the
*Balance of Actions* (*Mizan al-a'mal*) was
translated into Hebrew by Abraham Ibn Hasdai of Barcelona around
1210-1230; the *Lamps of Lights* (*Mishkat
al-anwar*) was twice translated in the 14th century;
the *Incoherence of Philosophy* (*Tahafut al-falasifa*)
was translated before 1411 by Zerahyah ha-Levi Saladin -
probably, a member of the Catalan circle of Hasdai Crescas, who might
have employed al-Ghazali's work as one of the undeclared sources
of his famous *Light of the Lord* (*Or Adonai*), a deep
critique of some key points of Aristotelian philosophy. (However, this
hypothesis has been criticized by Harry A. Wolfson: see Wolfson 1929a,
11-16.)


## 7. Ibn Bajja



A number of philosophical works by the Spanish Arabo-Islamic author
Abu Bakr Ibn Bajja (d. 1138), usually called "Ibn
al-Sa'igh" by the Jewish tradition, were known and
employed by Medieval Jewish philosophers.



The first of these philosophers who gives evidence of having been
'influenced' by him is a well-known Jewish
fellow-countryman and contemporary, Judah Halevi: as shown by Shlomo
Pines (see Pines 1980, 210-217), in chapter 1 of book one of his
*Book of the Khazar* he reflects not Avicenna's
philosophy (as in another place of his work: see above, 5), rather Ibn
Bajja's as expounded in his *Epistle On the Conjunction of
the Agent Intellect with Man* (*Risala al-ittisal*), and
gives a sort of summary of his main ideas about God and the world.
Maimonides had the highest esteem of Ibn Bajja: he affirmed that
"he was a great and wise philosopher, and all his works are
right and correct", and possibly appreciated him as a
commentator of Aristotle too (Marx 1934-1935, 379). In some
cases he was surely influenced by Ibn Bajja's thought: in the
*Guide of the Perplexed*, he explicitly refers to some of his
philosophical and scientific ideas, and reveals in particular the
influence of his doctrines about the existence of only one intellect
after death, the possibility of the conjunction between man and the
Active Intellect, the division of men into three classes (according to
their different degrees of knowledge of the highest truths), as well
as the idea of the prophet as a perfect solitary man, which seems to
have been inspired by Ibn Bajja's well-known work, the
*Regimen of the Solitary Man* (*Tadbir al-mutawahhid*);
moreover, Maimonides knew also Ibn Bajja's hypothesis, according
to which God would be the spirit of the celestial body which includes
all that is around the earth (see Pines' observations in Moses
Maimonides 1963, 1:ciii-cvii; about Maimonides' knowledge of Ibn
Bajja's doctrines, see also Davidson 2005, 114-115). The
last idea was found by Maimonides in Ibn Bajja's commentary on
Aristotle's *Physics*, a work which appears to have been
well-known to a later Medieval Jewish philosopher: Shem Tov Ibn
Falaquera. As shown by Bruno Chiesa and Yair Shiffman (Chiesa 1986,
85-86; Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera 2001, 156-157, 180, 207,
221-223, 265-266, 277, 318, 323-328, 331-332),
for commenting on Maimonides' *Guide* Falaquera more or
less literally quoted and shortly commented on a number of passages
taken from various works by Ibn Bajja: not only his *Regimen of the
Solitary Man* and his *Epistle On the Conjunction*, but
also his *Epistle of Farewell* (*Risala al-wada'*)
and some less known works, like the already mentioned commentary on
*Physics* and the commentary on Aristotle's *De
anima*; some of these quotations are found in Falaquera's
*Book of Degrees* too.



A substantial interest in Ibn Bajja's philosophical thought was
shown by three other Jewish philosophers living in the first half of
the 14th century: Hezekiah bar Halafta, David Ibn Bilia and
Moses Narboni. Hezekiah bar Halafta (nicknamed "Bonenfant de
Millau"), a Provencal Jewish philosopher, wrote in 1320 a
supercommentary to Petrus Hispanus' *Summulae*, where a
number of passages taken from Ibn Bajja's supercommentaries on
al-Farabi's own summaries of Porphyry's *Isagoge*
and Aristotle's *Categories* and *De
interpretatione* are found and commented on: this was the first
and possibly unique case of the influence of Ibn Bajja as a logician
and as an interpreter of al-Farabi on Medieval Jewish treatment of
logic (Zonta 1997b, 576-583). David Ibn Bilia, a Portuguese Jew
working in the period 1320-1340, commissioned a translation of
the *Epistle of Farewell* to a certain Hayyim Ibn Vivas: he
wrote marginal notes on some points of it (see Steinschneider 1893,
358-359). Moses Narboni too commented on this *Epistle*
(see Hayoun 1990a; critical edition in Hayoun 1990b); moreover, he
commissioned (or wrote himself) and commented on a Hebrew compendium
of Ibn Bajja's *Regimen* (critical edition in Hayoun
1987). Narboni's positive approach to this Arab-Islamic
philosopher might have been suggested by Maimonides'
affirmations about Ibn Bajja. Narboni was a declared Averroist (see
below, 9), but he might have tried to find in Ibn Bajja something in
agreement with Averroes' philosophical thought.


## 8. Ibn Tufayl



The unique well-known work by the Spanish Arabo-Islamic philosopher
Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185), the *Living* *Son of the Watchful*
(*Hayy ben Yaqzan*), exerted a substantially limited
'influence' over Medieval Jewish philosophy. For example,
Pines affirms that "there is no evidence to show that Maimonides
was in any way influenced by Ibn Tufayl's philosophic
tale", although this influence cannot be totally excluded (Moses
Maimonides 1963, 1:cviii; see also Davidson 2005, 115-116).



The main one among the very few cases of a direct influence of Ibn
Tufayl on a relevant figure of Medieval Judaic thought is the
anonymous Hebrew translation of his work (bearing the title
*Iggeret Hayawan ben Yaqtsan*), which was commented on by Moses
Narboni; Narboni's commentary (apparently, the only extant one
on this text) was written in 1349 and has been very recently published
by Maurice-Ruben Hayoun (Hayoun 2002). Narboni's commentary
bears the title *Epistle of Conjunction* (*Iggeret
ha-devequt*), so showing that Narboni might have commented on this
particular text in order to find in it a substantial confirmation of
the well-known doctrine about the conjunction between man and the
Active Intellect. As a matter of fact, like in the case of Ibn
Bajja's philosophical works, Narboni himself might have been the
translator of this work from Arabic into Hebrew, or at least might
have assigned this translation to a member of his "team".
Narboni's interpretation of Ibn Tufayl's work influenced a
number of 15th-century Jewish philosophers, mostly in Spain
and Italy, who knew and in some cases were strongly connected to
Averroism (see Steinschneider 1893, 366-368): Joseph Ibn Shem
Tov (living around 1450), Abraham Bibago (d. 1489), Isaac Arama, Isaac
Abravanel (1437-1508), Yohanan Alemanno (living in the second
half of the 15th century). Finally, it should be noted that
Ibn Tufayl's works (not only the *Living Son of the
Watchful*, but also some minor works, apparently lost in their
original Arabic texts) appeared among the main sources of a typical
example of eclectic "Jewish Avicennism" in
14th-century Spain: Joseph Ibn Waqqar's *Treatise
for Reconciling Philosophy and Religious Law* (see Vajda 1962,
128, 132).


## 9. Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Some of His Followers



Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198) is usually regarded to have been
the major "master" of Islamic philosophy among Jews in the
Late Middle Ages - although he might have had to share this key
position with Avicenna and al-Ghazali. Almost all his philosophical
works were translated from Arabic into Hebrew in the period
1230-1330, sometimes even more than once (only one of them was
later translated from Latin into Hebrew, around 1480); almost all of
them were quoted, summarized, paraphrased, annotated and commented on
by a number of philosophers during the 14th and
15th centuries. As a matter of fact, some of these texts
are preserved only through these translations, due to the loss of
their original versions, and their success among Jewish philosophers
was surely wider than the success they gained among Arabic thinkers,
and probably equal to the success they gained among Latin Christian
ones. A real history of "Jewish Averroism" has not yet
been written, so that most information about it can be found in
Steinschneider's book about Medieval Jewish translations
(Steinschneider 1893, 49-339).



Maimonides set the tone of this Jewish approach to Averroes by
affirming in his letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon: "Take care not to
read Aristotle's books without the commentaries on them: those
by Alexander (of Aphrodisias), those by Themistius, and those by
Averroes" (Marx 1934-1935, 378). There are some clues to
the fact that Maimonides and Averroes agreed in some key points of
their doctrines, especially in the fields of metaphysics and theology;
however, Maimonides explicitely declared in a letter to his disciple
Joseph ben Judah, written when he had just completed some parts of the
*Guide*, that he had received a copy of most of Averroes'
commentaries on Aristotle, but had not yet read them (about the
relationship between Maimonides and Averroes, see Pines'
observations in Moses Maimonides 1963, 1:cviii-cxxi). As a matter of
fact, a concrete, sure proof of Averroes' influence on
Maimonides' philosophical thought has not yet been found; but
this does not exclude that he really knew well Averroes'
philosophy. In any case, Maimonides opened the way to a sort of
adoption of Averroes as an unofficial, "Judaizing"
interpreter of Aristotle: the many Western European Jewish followers
of Maimonides' thought (active in Spain, Provence, and Italy in
the 13th-15th centuries) seem to have referred
to the above words as a justification for employing the commentaries
of Averroes in reading and interpreting Aristotle's works.
Significantly, they did not usually employ either Alexander or
Themistius, i.e., the other two commentators recommended by
Maimonides. Their particular choice of Averroes might be explained
either because of the example given by contemporary Latin Christian
commentators, or because of the easier availability of his
commentaries in Spain (where they had been written and had spread
during Averroes' life) with respect of those by al-Farabi,
Avicenna and Ibn Bajja, or because of the didactic usefulness of them
for knowing in detail Aristotle's words and the opinions of all
the other Greek and Arabic commentators, whom Averroes quoted and
discussed in his works. Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera, in the introduction to
his work *The Opinions of the Philosophers* (a detailed
commentary on Aristotle's physics and metaphysics), affirms:
"All that I have written here corresponds to Aristotle's
words, as they are commented on by the sage Averroes. He was the last
of the commentators (of Aristotle), and collected the cream of the
works of the previous commentators, as well as of Aristotle's
words".



A key role in transmitting to Jewish philosophers a direct knowledge
of Averroes' philosophy was obviously played by the
Arabic-into-Hebrew translations of his works, including
Averroes' various commentaries on Aristotle's texts. This
translation process involved a number of scholars: in approximate
chronological order, they were Jacob Anatoli (who finished in Naples
in 1232 his translation of Averroes' "middle
commentaries" [*talkhisat*] on Porphyry's
*Isagoge*, as well as on Aristotle's *Categories*
[both published in a critical edition in Averrois Cordubensis 1969],
*De interpretatione, Prior* and *Posterior Analytics*),
Moses Ibn Tibbon (who wrote in Provence in the period 1244-1261
his translations of Averroes' summaries of Aristotle's
*Physics*, *De caelo, De generatione* [critical edition:
Averrois Cordubensis 1958], *Meteorology, De anima, De sensu et
sensato* [critical edition: Averrois Cordubensis 1954],
*Metaphysics*, as well as that of the "middle
commentary" on the *De anima* [critical edition: Ivry
2003]), Solomon Ibn Ayyub (who wrote in Beziers in 1259 his
translation of the "middle commentary" on the *De
caelo*), Shem Tov ben Isaac of Tortosa (who wrote around
1255-1260 his translation of the "middle commentary"
on the *De anima*), Zerahyah Hen (who finished in Rome in 1284
his translation of the "middle commentaries" on the
*Physics* and the *Metaphysics* [critical edition: Zonta
2011]), Jacob ben Makhir (who finished in Provence in 1289 his
translation of the summaries of Porphyry's *Isagoge* and
Aristotle's *Organon*, including *Rhetoric* and
*Poetics*, and translated in 1302 Averroes' "middle
commentary" on Aristotle's *De partibus* and *De
generatione animalium*), Qalonymos ben Qalonymos (who translated
in Arles in the period 1313-1317 the "middle
commentaries" on Aristotle's *Topics, Sophistical
Confutations, Physics, De generatione* [critical edition: Averrois
Cordubensis 1958]*, Meteorology,* and *Metaphysics* [see
Zonta 2010 and 2011], as well as the "long commentaries"
on the *Posterior Analytics*, the *Physics,* and
possibly on the *Metaphysics* too [about the last work,
however, see Halper 2010 and 2013]), Samuel of Marseilles (who
translated in Beaucaire in 1320-1322 the "middle
commentary" on the *Nicomachean Ethics* [critical
edition: Berman 1999], as well as that on Plato's
*Republic* [critical edition: Rosenthal 1956, 1966], and
revised the previous Arabic-to-Hebrew versions of Averroes'
*Epitome of the Organon* and *Middle Commentary on
Porphyry's Isagoge*), Moses of Salon (who translated around 1320
the "long commentary" on the *Metaphysics*,
possibly employing Qalonymos' previous translation), and Todros
Todrosi (who translated in Trinquetaille in 1337 the "middle
commentaries" on *Rhetoric* and *Poetics*
[critical editions: Goldenthal 1842, Lasinio 1872]). Also the first
part of Averroes' commentary on the *De intellectu*
ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias was translated into Hebrew
(critical edition: Davidson 1988). Other philosophical works by
Averroes are known through the Arabic-into-Hebrew versions made in the
14th century: they include Averroes' *Questions on
Logic* (some of which were written by some Spanish Arabo-Islamic
followers of him) and *Questions on Physics* (English
translation: Goldstein 1990), the *De substantia orbis* (*Fi
l-jirm al-samawi*) -- which is lost in Arabic, but is
preserved in an anonymous Medieval Hebrew translation published in a
critical edition by Arthur Hyman (Averroes 1986; about another aspect
of the Medieval Hebrew tradition of this work, see Rigo 1992) --
the *Epistle on the Possibility of the Conjunction of the
Intellect* -- which is lost in Arabic, but is preserved in an
anonymous Hebrew translation commented on by Moses Narboni (critical
edition by Kalman P. Bland in Ibn Rushd 1982) -- and the treatise
*On the First Mover* (*Fi l-muharrik al-awwal*) -
which is lost in Arabic, and is preserved in some Medieval Hebrew
quotations by Moses ha-Levi (see Wolfson 1950) and Shem Tov Ibn
Falaquera. Moreover, Averroes' defence of Aristotelian (and his
own) philosophy against al-Ghazali's attacks, *The
Incoherence of the Incoherence* (*Tahafut al-tahafut*), was
first employed as a major source for Falaquera's *Guide to
the Guide*, and then translated twice into Hebrew in Provence
before 1340, by an anonymous author (Moses Narboni?) and by Qalonymos
ben David Todrosi (maybe, a Jewish Averroist) - by the former
for defending Aristotelianism, and by the latter for showing its
internal contradictions (Steinschneider 1893, 332-337). Finally,
even a very short work on the intellect by Averroes' son, Abu
Muhammad 'Abdallah Ibn Rushd, was translated into Hebrew and
might have had some influence on Late Medieval Judaic thought (Burnett
and Zonta 2000).



Almost all these works were quoted and commented on by a number of
14th- and 15th-centuries Jewish philosophers (as for the important
case of Aristotle's *Physics*, see Glasner 2011). More or
less literal passages taken from the commentaries on Aristotle are
found in part one of Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen's encyclopedia,
*The Learning of Science* (*Midrash ha-hokhmah*),
written in Judaeo-Arabic and then translated into Hebrew in the period
1235-1247 (Fontaine 2000), and in Falaquera's *Opinions
of the Philosophers* (Harvey 2000). However, the influence of this
commentaries was widespread in Provence, in the first half of the
14th century, when a number of supercommentaries on them
was written down. The famous Jewish philosopher and scientist Levi ben
Gershom (Gersonides, 1288-1344), active in Avignon and in other
Provencal places from 1319 onwards, wrote a series of
supercommentaries on Averroes' commentaries on Aristotle in the
period 1320-1324; some of his "students" (S.
ha-Levi, Porfash, Solomon of Urgul, Vital), as well as the
Provencal Jewish philosopher Yeda'yah ha-Penini of
Beziers (1280-1340 circa), followed his example (see
Glasner 1995). Due to his innovative and sometimes critical approach
to the study of Averroes' Aristotelianism, Gersonides was surely
the most original 14th-century Jewish interpreter of
Averroes' philosophy; but he was not the only major one. A more
faithful approach to Averroes is found in Moses Narboni, who wrote a
number of still unpublished commentaries on his works (not only
supercommentaries on his Aristotelian commentaries, but also
commentaries on some other philosophical texts by Averroes), and
regarded him as the ideal interpreter of Aristotelianism. He affirmed
that there was no need to verify Aristotle's teaching, since it
was surely true, as confirmed by Averroes' assertion that
Aristotle had the first and the last word on everything.



Jewish Averroism, in the sense of a substantial agreement with
Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle's works, continued
in 15th-century Spain and Italy. For example, it was found
in the philosophical supercommentaries on Averroes'
"middle commentaries" on the *Posterior Analytics*
and the *Metaphysics* written around 1450 by the Aragonese Jew
Abraham Bibago, as well as in the works of a member of a family of
Spanish Jewish philosophers, the Ibn Shem Tovs: Isaac ben Josef Ibn
Shem Tov, active in the period 1470-1490, wrote a series of
supercommentaries on Averroes' commentaries on Aristotle's
*Physics* (Wolfson 1929b). Evident traces of it can be found
also in Elijah Delmedigo (1460-1493), who praised Averroes as
the best philosopher after Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias.
However, in some cases it seems that this form of Averroism was
curiously influenced by some Latin Scholastic trends, like Thomism and
Latin Averroism. This might have happened in the anonymous Hebrew
supercommentary on Averroes' "middle commentary" on
the *Nicomachean Ethics*, probably written in Spain around
1440, as well as in the works written by a 15th-century
Italian author: Judah Messer Leon (1425-1498 circa), whose bulk
commentary on books one, two and three of Aristotle's
*Physics* was explicitly based upon Averroes'
"middle" and "long commentaries" on Aristotle,
but employed a lot of direct or indirect Scholastic sources (see Zonta
2006b, 214-217). In other cases, some 15th-century
Spanish Jewish philosophers even openly attacked Averroism as an
old-fashioned trend: Eli Habillo did this around 1470, in introducing
his own translation of Antonius Andreas' questions on
Aristotle's *Metaphysics*.



Finally, it should be noted that even some of Averroes'
"religious" works were translated into Hebrew and employed
as sources by some Jewish philosophers: the *Decisive Treatise*
(*Fasl al-maqal*) (a critical edition of the Hebrew translation
appeared in Golb 1956-1957), the *Appendix*
(*Damima*) to it (see Vajda 1954), and the *Disclosure of
the Proof Methods Concerning the Principles of Religion*
(*Kashf fi manahig al-adilla fi 'aqa'id al-milla*)
(see Di Donato 2006). All these works inspired some parts of
Falaquera's commentary on Maimonides' *Guide*, as
well as his defence of philosophy in the *Epistle of Debate for
Explaining the Concordance between Religious Law and Science*
(*Iggeret ha-wikkuah be-ve'ur ha-haskamah asher beyn ha-Torah
we-ha-hokhmah*; critical edition: Harvey 1987); however, apart
from this case, they seems to have had no extensive influence on Late
Medieval Jewish philosophy.


## 10. Fakhr al-din al-Razi and Sihab al-din al-Suhrawardi



Two Islamic authors pertaining to different ways of Islamic
Avicennism, Fakhr al-din al-Razi (d. 1210) and Sihab al-din
al-Suhrawardi (1155-1191), give evidence of having exerted their
'influence' over some Jewish philosophers, both in Europe
and in the Near East.



Fakhr al-din al-Razi, a faithful follower and commentator of Avicenna
and his works as an interpreter of Aristotle, was explicitely
mentioned and employed as a source by three 14th-century
"Jewish Avicennist" authors (see above, 5). Judah ben
Solomon Natan mentioned al-Razi's *Oriental Researches*
(*al-Mabahit al-mashriqiyya*) as one of his reference points in
the introduction to his translation of al-Ghazali's
*Intentions of the Philosophers*. Todros Todrosi put some
passages of the same work, which he personally translated from Arabic
into Hebrew, in the margin of his own translation of
pseudo-Farabi's work, *The Sources of Questions*: they
are al-Razi's definition of the concept of
"notification" or "definition", and a
metaphysical passage about his "Avicennian" explanation of
the chain of the emanations of the intellects from the First
Intellect, which Todros compares with a similar passage taken from
Avicenna's *The Salvation*. Moreover, in his
philosophical anthology Todros mentions other passages about logic
allegedly taken from al-Razi, which have not yet been identified.
Finally, Joseph Ibn Waqqar explicitely quotes two passages of
al-Razi's commentary on Avicenna's *Remarks and
Admonitions*, the *Core of the Remarks* (*Lubab
al-isharat*) (see Vajda 1962, 125-126).



As for Suhrawardi, one of the "mystical" Islamic
interpreters of Avicenna, he might have been inspired by some of the
philosophical ideas of Abu l-Barakat's *Book About the Point
of View*, in particular his idea about the angels (see Pines 1979,
254-255), and was explicitly quoted by David ben Joshua
Maimonides (see Fenton 1984, 36-37).


## 11. Christian Arabic Authors



Some Christian Arabic philosophers working in the 9th and
10th centuries give evidence of having exerted their
'influence' upon Medieval Judaic thought. The first of
them was Abd al-Masih Ibn Na'ima al-Himsi, a collaborator of
al-Kindi: his famous Arabic philosophical work, the "shorter
version" of the *Theology of Aristotle* (a reworking of
parts of books four, five, and six of Plotinus'
*Enneads*), as well as other Arabic texts connected to it (the
*Sayings of the Greek Sage*, the *De causis* and
pseudo-Empedocles' *Book of the Five Substances*), might
have exerted their direct influence over Solomon Ibn Gabirol, as
suggested by Jacques Schlanger (see Schlanger 1968, 52-109).
Moreover, a "longer version" of the *Theology of
Aristotle* might have been written by a Judaeo-Arabic scholar in
10th- or 11th-century Egypt: it was apparently
quoted by Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera (Langermann 1999), who in any case
knew and employed also the "shorter version" of it (Fenton
1992), and was translated into Hebrew in the 16th century
by Moses Arovas (about this translation, now lost, see Fenton 1986).
Falaquera wrote also a summary of the *Book of the Five
Substances* (edited in Kaufmann 1899, 17-37), which proves
to be useful for reconstructing the contents of the lost original text
(see the French translation by Gyongy Hegedus in De Smet
1998, 208-231). The main role in influencing Jewish philosophy
was played by the *De causis*, an Arabic work mixing up some
aspects of Plotinus' and Proclus' theology and probably
written in the 9th century in al-Kindi's circle by a
still unidentified author (a Christian-Arabic one?): it was translated
into Hebrew four times in the period 1260-1480, and exerted its
'influence' over a number of Jewish philosophers (see
Rothschild 1985, 1994).



Also a minor philosophical work by a 9th-century Christian
Arabic author, the *Book On the Difference between Spirit and
Soul* (*Kitab al-fasl bayna l-ruh wa-l-nafs*), was
translated into Hebrew in the Middle Ages (Steinschneider 1893, 289):
it was quoted by some Medieval Jewish authors. Finally, in the first
half of the 10th century, in the circle of
al-Farabi's followers there was an "exchange of
opinions" about some metaphysical doctrines: it involved the
Christian Arabic philosopher Yahya Ibn 'Adi and two minor Jewish
scholars, Ibn Abi Sa'id al-Mawsili and Bishr ibn Sam'an
ibn 'Irs, as shown by Shlomo Pines (Pines 1955).