haRoffe Abū Ayyūb "Suleiman" ibn al-Muʿallim al-Yahūdī

In his Treatise on Asthma (102–105), Moses Maimonides mentions that Abū Ayyūb ibn al-Muʿallim from Seville, known as the Israelite (al-Yahūdī), was one of the four physicians at the court of the Almoravid emir ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf b. Tāshufīn in Marrakesh, along with another Sevillian Jewish physician named Abū ʾl-Ḥasan Meʾir Ibn Qamni’el, the Saragossan Abū ʿAlī ʿAlāʾ ibn Zuhr, and one Sufyān. He relates a story in which these four physicians administer the wrong dosage of theriac to the emir. In his Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa ʾl-Mudhākara, Moses ibn Ezra describes Ibn al-Muʿallim as a scholar of religious law “who performs magic in both languages,” that is, in Arabic and Hebrew (42v). His poetry is also praised by Judah al-Ḥarīzī (d. 1225) in the third chapter of the Taḥkemoni (45).

In the only Arabic verses by him that have come down to us, Ibn al-Muʿallim claims to have sent a knife to a lover who intended to leave him. This poem is included in Rāyāt al-Mubarrizīn wa-Ghāyāt al-Mumayyizīn, an anthology of Arabic poetry by Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī (d. 1286), who refers to Ibn al-Muʿallim as the only poet from Marrakesh worthy of mention (242, no. 126). As for his output in Hebrew, only one poem by Ibn al-Muʿallim has come down to us: ʿAv Taʿarof (A Cloud Shall Drop Down [Rain]). He sent the poem to Judah ha-Levi in Granada, but it was Moses ibn Ezra, not Ha-Levi, who received it and wrote a reply, Nofet Sefatayim (Honeycomb of the Lips) in the same meter and rhyme. The former work, preserved in Ha-Levi’s dīwān, has been printed many times (Brody-Albrecht, Shaʿar ha-Shir, no. 116; Schirmann, Ha-Shira, no. 240); the latter is included in the printed edition of Ibn Ezra’s dīwān (Shire ha-Ḥol, no. 95). When Ha-Levi received the poem, he too wrote a response in the same meter and rhyme: Aṭ Li ("With affection," first edited in full by Stern, pp. 262–263). Moses ibn Ezra (Shire ha-Ḥol, no. 110), Judah ha-Levi (Dīwān, nos. 33, 51, 75), and Abraham ibn Ezra (Dīwān, no. 195) are known to have written other poems in honor of Ibn al-Muʿallim, the latter a muwashshaḥ (strophic poem).

Recent scholarship has given particular attention to Ibn al-Muʿallim’s poetic activity in Arabic (Stern).

Esperanza Alfonso

Bibliography

Al-Ḥarizi, Judah. Taḥkemoni, ed. Israel Toporowsky (Tel Aviv: Maḥbarot le-Sifrut and Mosad Harav Kook, 1952).

Ha-Levi, Judah. Dīwān des Abū l Hasan Jehuda ha Levi. Diwan ve-hu Sefer Kolel Shire Avir ha-Meshorerim Yehuda ben Shemuʾel ha Levi, ed. Ḥayyim Brody, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1894–30); repr. A. M. Habermann (England, 1971).

Ibn Ezra, Abraham. Diwān des Abraham ibn Esra, ed. Jacob Egers (Berlin: Ittskovski, 1886).

Ibn Ezra, Moses. Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa ʾl-Mudhākara, ed. and trans. into Sp. Montserrat Abumalham, 2 vols. (Madrid: CSIC, 1986).

Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī. Rāyāt al-Mubarrizīn wa-Ghāyāt al-Mumayyizīn, ed. Muḥammad Riḍwān al-Dāyah (Damascus: Dār Ṭālas, 1987).

Maimonides, Moses. Maimonides on Asthma: A Parallel Arabic-English Text, ed., trans., and annot. Gerrit Bos (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

Schirmann, Ḥayyim. Ha-Shira ha-ʿIvrit bi-Sfarad u-ve-Provans (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1954–56).

Stern, Samuel M. “Arabic Poems by Spanish-Hebrew Poets,” in Romanica et Occidentalia: Études dédiées à la mémoire de Hiram Peri (Pflaum), ed. Moshe Lazar (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1963), pp. 254–263.

Cite this page

Esperanza Alfonso. "Ibn al-Muʿallim, Solomon (Abū Ayyūb)." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2013. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>