Isaac ben Israel ibn Abū ʾl-Barakāt Hibat Allah Ibn al-Shuwaykh

Ibn al-Shuwaykh, Isaac ben Israel

The Andalusian poet Judah al-Ḥarīzī came through the city of Aleppo in 1217. He mentions Jewish scholars and community leaders, such as Joseph Rosh ha-Seder and Abū ʾl-Faḍl (Ḥasday) whom he calls muqaddam (ed. Yahalom and Blau, p. 85, vv. 161–163; p. 137, v. 796). He also mentions civil servants, such as al-Rayyis Shamʿa al-Makīn, a secretary in the royal dīwān, and physicians, such as Abū ʾl-Barakāt ibn Abūʾl-Kathīr [Isaac ben Israel], whom he calls “unique” (ibid., p. 137, vv. 802 and 812).

Isaac ben Israel, whose full name in Arabic is given by the Baghdadi Arab historian Ibn al-Fuwaṭī (1334–1405) as Fakhr al-Dawla Abū ʾl-Fatḥ Isḥāq ibn Abū ʾl-Ḥasan ibn Abū ʾl-Barakāt ibn al-Shuwaykh, succeeded Isaac ha-Kohen ibn al-Awānī as gaon of the main Babylonian yeshiva in Baghdad (following the decline of the yeshivot in Pumbedita and Sura). He was already gaon by 1221, in which year a copy of Abū ’l-Barakāt Hibat Allāh’s commentary on Ecclesiastes was completed on his behalf in which he is described as “the head of the scholars’ yeshiva geʾon Yaʿaqov.” In addition to his halakhic proficiency, Isaac was well versed in astrology-astronomy, mathematics, literature, and grammar, and seems to have been consistently well regarded by his contemporaries, Muslim as well as Jewish. According to Ibn al-Ṣuqāʿī, another Arabic writer, Isaac, identified only as raʾs mathībat al-yahūd (head of the yeshiva of the Jews) but not by name, was also apparently a participant in the vizier’s assembly (Ar. majlis). He is praised for his intelligence and upright character by, inter alios, Eleazar ben Jacob ha-Bavli and Abraham Maimonides, the latter of whom writes of Isaac in the poetic preamble of one of his letters to him: “There is none like him among all my people / who so fills the role of a man of great learning . . . he is unequaled in our time / ‘the crown of our head’ [Lamentations 5:16].” Isaac was also a noted poet—in fact, according to Judah al-Ḥarīzī, “the choicest of their [i.e., Babylonian Jewry’s] poets” (Heb. miv ḥ ar meshorerehem), but at the same time al-Ḥarīzī writes (unjustly, according to scholarly consensus) that “the majority of them are to be considered as broken potsherds” (Heb. rubbam ke- ḥ eres nishbar ḥ ashuvim). Six of his piyyuṭim are extant and have been published in all the Sephardi rite maḥzorim for Yom Kippur (for bibliographic details, see Ben-Jacob, p. 32, n. 14). Isaac was apparently over eighty when he died (according to Ibn al-Fuwaṭī on January 8, 1248), and was remembered as “a man of culture and refinement, able to write in a beautiful script and compose first-rate poetry, and possessed of an outstanding knowledge of astronomy” (Ar. dhā fa ḍ l wa-adab yaktubu kha ṭṭ anḥ asanan wa-yan ẓ imu shiʿran jayyidan wa-yaʿrifu ʿilm al-najjām maʿrifatan jayyidatan; p. 224). He has also been identified as the author-compiler of the collection of homilies on the Pentateuch, drawn primarily from the writings of Saʿadya Gaon, entitled Maṭṭeh ʿOz, in Ms. Bodleian Hunt. 241 (Neubauer no. 1001; see Y.T. Langerman in Sinai 98 [1986]: 215–22; Y. Ratzaby, ibid. 107 [1991]: 112).

Michael G. Wechsler

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Citation Michael G. Wechsler. " Ibn al-Shuwaykh, Isaac ben Israel." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online , 2013. Reference. Jim Harlow. 29 January 2013 <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>