Judah ben Abbas

Judah ben Samuel ben Abbas was a Spanish Jewish writer of the thirteenth century. This form of his name is authenticated in the headings of his two works in "MS. Loewe," viii.; namely, "Minḥat Yehudah", a fragment of two leaves only, also styled "Meḳor Ḥayyim". Under the latter title the work is quoted in "Yair Netib", also styled "Shebeṭ Yehudah". Judah affirms that he composed this work at the age of twenty. It is of a moral and religious character. The fifteenth chapter contains a complete system of studies arranged according to pedagogical principles. It has been translated from the Bodleian manuscript by Moritz Güdemann, "Das jüdische Unterrichtswesen während der spanisch-arabischen Periode," i. 147. Commencing with the reading and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, he would have the child study, in regular order, morals, medicine, arithmetic, logic, physics, and, as the very last subject, metaphysics.