(c. 1055-after 1135). Spanish Hebrew poet. Born and raised in Granada into a wealthy and cultured family, he formed a lasting friendship there with Judah Halevi. After the conquest of Granada by the fanatical Muslim Almoravides, he fled to Christian Spain. For the rest of his life, he was a wanderer, suffering many misfortunes.
Master of both sacred and secular poetry, Ibn Ezra composed 220 Piyyutim (liturgical poems). Excelling in Seliḥot (penitential poems) in which he expresses his longing for his Maker, he is known as Ha-Salaḥ (writer of seliḥot). Many of his poems are recited in the High Holidays service in Sephardi congregations and in other rites. His poetic paraphrase of the Book of Jonah for the Day of Atonement was adopted in the Avignon festival prayer book. His secular poetry is largely found in his Sefer ha-Anak ("Necklace"), the themes being mainly love, wine, and nature. Ibn Ezra wrote a treatise in Arabic on rhetoric, translated into Hebrew under the title Shirat Yisrael. He also wrote a philosophical work in Arabic, known in its Hebrew translation as Arugat ha-Bosem, dealing with the relationship between God and the universe.
The New Encyclopedia of Judaism. Copyright © 1989, 2002 by G.G. The Jerusalem Publishing House, Ltd. All rights reserved.
