Yitzhak ben Yehudah Ibn Ghayyāth HaLevi

Yitzhak ben Yehudah Ibn Ghiyyāth (Ibn Ghayyāth)

Despite some discrepancies regarding his date of birth, it appears that Isaac ben Judah ibn Ghiyyāth was born in 1038 to a Jewish family that had long been settled in Lucena. During his lifetime, this city, with its almost entirely Jewish population, was part of the kingdom of Granada, under the rule of the Zirid monarch Bādīs b. Ḥabbūs (1038–74) and his grandson and successor ʿAbd Allāh (1073–90). Described in Jewish sources as “the city of poetry,” Lucena was home to the most renowned talmudic academy in al-Andalus.

Ibn Ghiyyāth had personal relationships with most of the Jewish intellectuals of his generation, but was particularly close to Samuel ha-Nagid ibn Naghrella and his son and successor Jehoseph ha-Nagid, both of whom served as ḥ ājib (Ar. major domo or chief minister) at the Zirid court in Granada. In 1066, when Jehoseph was assassinated and a riot broke out against the Granadan Jewish community, his widow and his son Abū Naṣr Azariah, who was a child at the time, fled to Lucena and stayed with Ibn Ghiyyāth. Young as he was, Azariah soon distinguished himself as a Hebrew poet. Moses ibn Ezra and Abraham ibn Da’ud concur that Ibn Ghiyyāth had grand plans for Jehoseph’s son, and wanted to set him up as head of the community of Lucena and other Andalusian towns, but his hopes were in vain, for Azariah died at the age of twenty. The inhabitants of Lucena supported Jehoseph’s widow for the rest of her life.

Ibn Ghiyyāth also died at an early age. He fell ill and was taken to Cordova for medical care, but died there, on a Sabbath, when he was fifty-one years old. His body was immediately returned to Lucena for burial. Just one year later, the Almoravids took control of Lucena from the Zirids.

Ibn Da’ud, who includes Ibn Ghiyyāth in the generation of five rabbis named Isaac that followed the first generation of the rabbinate in al-Andalus, notes his passion for secular knowledge and Torah, his background in Greek wisdom, and his ability as a poet. Highlighting his status as a rabbi, Ibn Da’ud says: “He spread the knowledge of the Torah and had many disciples,” among them most notably Joseph ibn Sahl ( Sefer ha-Qabbalah, pp. 60-61 Heb; pp. 81–82 trans.). Moses ibn Ezra, another prominent student of Ibn Ghiyyāth’s in Lucena, describes his teacher as a masterful writer of prose and verse in both Hebrew and Aramaic. Ibn Ezra emphasizes his panegyrics, elegies, and ascetic poems, but notes that his knowledge of Arabic and quantitative meter was deficient, a shortcoming that made his poetry verbose and conceptually poor (Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara, 39). In his Taḥkemoni, al-Ḥarīzī observes that Ibn Ghiyyāth’s poetry was difficult to understand, a comment that may indicate a change in poetic style and sensibility in al-Ḥarīzī’s generation.

Some of the many attributions of poetry to Ibn Ghiyyāth are disputed, but according to Schirmann his total output numbered more than four hundred poems (1965, p. 185, n. 3). Many of them survived in ancient maḥzorim, such as the Tripoli Maḥzor Sifte Renanot (Venice, 1711) and the Sicilian Maḥzor Ḥazonim (Constantinople, 1580 or 1585). A significant number of additional poems found in the Cairo Geniza have been published in the last few decades. Ibn Ghiyyāth wrote surprisingly few secular compositions. Upon Samuel ha-Nagid's death, he wrote an elegy with meter and rhyme, Ha-Itnehu Viryyan de-Izdahru ("Were they shaken by the vision they had?"), not in Hebrew, as was customary among Andalusian Jewish poets, but in Aramaic (Poems, no. 113). He also used Aramaic in a poem of friendship in quantitative meter, Ha-Iṣterikh le-Seraq ("What is either plain or patterned, does it need to be painted?"), addressed to the Andalusian scholar Moses ibn al-Qurṭubī (Poems, no. 115). Schirmann (1995, p. 365) attributes Ibn Ghiyyāth’s unusual predilection for Aramaic to a reticence to use Hebrew in secular poetry. However, he wrote two Hebrew elegies in honor of the murdered Jehosef ha-Nagid, Helili Tora and Ekhah Pit’om (Poems, nos. 120 and 84). A few wedding songs have also been preserved (e.g., Poems, nos. 282 and 268), as well as a poem of praise to Abraham of Granada (Poems, no. 361). According to Ibn Ezra’s account (Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara, 68 and 68v), he also wrote a poem in response to certain tragic events that befell Lucena. Schirmann (1995, pp. 366–67) relates these events to a conflict between the Zirid king and the Jewish population of Lucena mentioned in̔ Sultan ̔Abdallah’s Memoires, but Ashtor (vol. 2, p. 334) takes issue with him on the grounds that the dates do not match.

In contrast to the sparse secular output that has survived, quite a few of Ibn Ghiyyāth’s liturgical poems are extant. His liturgical poetry retains the flavor of earlier piyyuṭim but in a manner appropriate to the Sephardic school of poetry. From a prosodic standpoint, he often employs syllabic meter, but he also writes in quantitative Arabic meter. His predilection for the strophic form, most often with a refrain, is likewise noteworthy. As for his choice of themes, in his liturgical poetry he abandons the midrashic style of earlier payṭanim to introduce scientific, philosophical, and mystical themes more akin to the Andalusian spirit. For example, some of his piyyuṭim list the members of the body (including the fetus and the uterus) and their functions, the four types of minerals, the four elements, and other lists deriving from the natural sciences. Cosmology, astrology, and even psychology also had an impact on his compositions. Likewise, Neoplatonism left an impression on those of his works that address the subjects of God and man. Noteworthy among his piyyuṭim is a maʿamad for Yom Kippur, mentioned in al-Ḥarīzī’s Taḥkemoni, which follows in the footsteps of similar earlier collections by Joseph ibn Abitur and Solomon ibn Gabirol, and a volume of seliḥot for the nights of Elul.

The imbalance between Ibn Ghiyyāth’s secular and liturgical poetry is probably indicative, in general, of his education, training, and scholarly activities. While the extent of his secular education cannot be determined with certainty, his work in the religious sphere is well known. He headed the Lucena academy until his death, and made a name for himself as a talmudist, a scholar of Jewish law, and a biblical commentator.

As a talmudist, Ibn Ghiyyāth wrote a commentary on the Talmud under the title Kitāb al-Sirāj (Heb. Sefer ha-Ner, Book of the Lamp) that has survived in extremely fragmentary form. From Geniza evidence, it is known to have covered at least nine talmudic tractates: Shabbat, Pesaḥim, Moʿed Qaṭan, Beṣa, Megilla, Sukka, Bava Meṣiʿa, Ketubbot, and Giṭṭin. It was apparently written in a mix of Arabic and Hebrew (Ta-Shma 1982, p. 61). The extant excerpts transmit quotations from earlier gaonic authorities whose works have not otherwise survived.

Only one of Ibn Ghiyyāth’s legal works is extant. A collection of rulings arranged by subject, it discusses the laws of festivals and other topics, and was published by Simḥa Bamberger under the title Shaʿare Simḥa. In this work Ibn Ghiyyāth clearly draws from earlier legal authorities, such as the geonim and Rav Ḥananel. Hilkheta Gavrata, a book of rulings on special questions by his contemporary and friend Samuel ibn Naghrella, appears to have particularly influenced his legal views. Ibn Ghiyyāth’s halakhot were often used by later Sephardic scholars.

In the field of biblical exegesis, only a lengthy commentary on Ecclesiastes, incorrectly attributed to Saʿadya Gaon, is extant. Much in the same vein as Saʿadya, Ibn Ghiyyāth wrote this work in Judeo-Arabic. He entitled it Kitāb al-Zuhd (The Book of Continence). It begins with a long introduction that explains the necessity of a scholarly background for an understanding of its contents and summarizes the lessons it teaches. His analysis of the biblical book is threefold: linguistic, often including comparisons with Arabic, exegetical, showing great sensitivity to style, and didactic.

Ibn Ghiyyāth’s liturgical poetry and his commentary on Ecclesiastes have received the most scholarly attention in recent years. While a study of the precise extent of Ibn Ghiyyāth’s influence on the development of liturgical poetry in al-Andalus has yet to be written, Bernstein, Marcus, Schirmann, and Schmeltzer have all greatly contributed to our understanding in this area. In addition, Mittelman’s unpublished doctoral dissertation examines Ibn Ghiyyāth’s exegetical work in depth (Hebrew University, 1999).

Esperanza Alfonso

Bibliography

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Ashtor, Eliyahu. The Jews of Moslem Spain, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973–84).

Ibn Daʾud, Abraham. Sefer ha-Qabbalah: the Book of Tradition, ed. and trans. Gerson D. Cohen. (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005).

Ibn Ezra, Moses. Kitāb al-Mu ḥ ā ḍ ara wa-l-Mudhākara, ed. and trans. into Spanish Montserrat Abumalham, 2 vols. (Madrid: CSIC, 1986).

Ibn Ghiyyāth, Isaac. The Poems of Rabbi Isaac ibn Ghiyyat: Lucena 1038–Córdoba 1089, ed. Yona David (Jerusalem: ‘Akhshav, 1987) [Hebrew].

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Sáenz-Badillos, Ángel. “Cinco poemas de Yiṣḥaq ibn Gayat,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos 31, no. 2 (1982): 31–52.

———. “Nuevos poemas de Yiṣḥaq ben Gayat, el poeta de Lucena,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos 30, no. 2 (1981): 5-35.

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Cite this page

Esperanza Alfonso. "Ibn Ghiyyāth (Ibn Ghayyāth), Isaac ben Judah." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2013. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>