Solomon ibn Gabirol


Solomon ibn Gabirol or Solomon ben Judah was an 11th-century Jewish poet and philosopher in the neoplatonic tradition in Al-Andalus. He published over a hundred poems, as well as works of Hebrew Biblical exegesis, philosophy, ethics, and satire. One source credits ibn Gabirol with creating a golem, possibly female, for household chores.
In the 19th century, scholars discovered that medieval translators had Latinized ibn Gabirol's name to Avicebron or Avencebrol; his work on Jewish neoplatonic philosophy had become highly regarded in Islamic and Christian philosophical circles but attributed to only his Latinized name during the intervening years. Ibn Gabirol is well known in the history of philosophy for the doctrine that all things, including souls and intellects, are composed of matter and form and for his emphasis on divine will.

Biography

Little is known of Gabirol's life, and some sources give contradictory information. Sources agree that he was born in Málaga, but are unclear whether in late 1021 or early 1022 CE. The year of his death is a matter of dispute, with conflicting accounts having him dying either before age 30 or by age 48.
Gabirol lived a life of material comfort, never having to work to sustain himself, but he lived a difficult and loveless life, suffering ill health, misfortunes, fickle friendships, and powerful enemies. From his teenage years, he suffered from some disease, possibly lupus vulgaris, that would leave him embittered and in constant pain. He indicates in his poems that he considered himself short and ugly. Of his personality, Moses ibn Ezra wrote: "his irascible temperament dominated his intellect, nor could he rein the demon that was within himself. It came easily to him to lampoon the great, with salvo upon salvo of mockery and sarcasm." He has been described summarily as "a social misfit."
Gabirol's writings indicate that his father was a prominent figure in Córdoba, but was forced to relocate to Málaga during a political crisis in 1013. Gabirol's parents died while he was a child, leaving him an orphan with no siblings or close relatives. He was befriended, supported and protected by a prominent political figure of the time, Yekutiel ibn Hassan al-Mutawakkil ibn Qabrun, and moved to Zaragoza, then an important center of Jewish culture. Gabirol's anti-social temperament, occasionally boastful poetry, and sharp wit earned him powerful enemies, but as long as Jekuthiel lived, Gabirol remained safe from them and was able to freely immerse himself in study of the Talmud, grammar, geometry, astronomy, and philosophy. However, when Gabirol was seventeen years old, his benefactor was assassinated as the result of a political conspiracy, and by 1045 Gabirol found himself compelled to leave Zaragoza. He was then sponsored by no less than the grand vizier and top general to the kings of Granada, Samuel ibn Naghrillah. Gabirol made ibn Naghrillah an object of praise in his poetry until an estrangement arose between them and ibn Naghrillah became the butt of Gabirol's bitterest irony. It seems Gabirol never married, and that he spent the remainder of his life wandering.
Gabirol had become an accomplished poet and philosopher at an early age:
  • By age 17, he had composed five of his known poems, one an azhara enumerating all 613 commandments of Judaism.
  • At age 17, he composed a 200-verse elegy for his friend Yekutiel and four other notable elegies to mourn the death of Hai Gaon.
  • By age 19, he had composed a 400-verse alphabetical and acrostic poem teaching the rules of Hebrew grammar.
  • By age 23 or 25, he had composed, in Arabic, "Improvement of the Moral Qualities"
  • At around age 25, or not, he may have composed his collection of proverbs Mivchar Pninim, although scholars are divided on his authorship.
  • At around age 28, or not, he composed his philosophical work Fons Vitæ.
As mentioned above, the conflicting accounts of Gabirol's death have him dying either before age 30 or by age 48. The opinion of earliest death, that he died before age 30, is believed to be based upon a misreading of medieval sources. The remaining two opinions are that he died either in 1069 or 1070, or around 1058 in Valencia. As to the circumstances of his death, one legend claims that he was trampled to death by an Arab horseman. A second legend relates that he was murdered by a Muslim poet who was jealous of Gabirol's poetic gifts, and who secretly buried him beneath the roots of a fig tree. The tree bore fruit in abundant quantity and of extraordinary sweetness. Its uniqueness excited attention and provoked an investigation. The resulting inspection of the tree uncovered Gabirol's remains, and led to the identification and execution of the murderer.

Historical identity

Though Gabirol's legacy was esteemed throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods, it was historically minimized by two errors of scholarship that mis-attributed his works.

False ascription as King Solomon

Gabirol seems to have often been called "the Málagan", after his place of birth, and would occasionally so refer to himself when encrypting his signature in his poems. While in Modern Hebrew the city is also called Málaga, that is in deference to its current Spanish pronunciation. In Gabirol's day, when it was ruled by Arabic speakers, it was called Mālaqa, as it is to this day by Arabic speakers. The 12th-century Arab philosopher Jabir ibn Aflah misinterpreted manuscript signatures of the form "שלמה... יהודה... אלמלאק" to mean "Solomon... the Jew.. the king", and so ascribed to Solomon some seventeen philosophical essays of Gabirol. The 15th-century Jewish philosopher Yohanan Alemanno imported that error back into the Hebrew canon, and added another four works to the list of false ascriptions.

Identification as Avicebron

In 1846, Solomon Munk discovered among the Hebrew manuscripts in the French National Library in Paris a work by Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera. Comparing it with a Latin work by Avicebron entitled Fons Vitæ, Munk proved them to both excerpt an Arabic original of which the Fons Vitæ was evidently the translation. Munk concluded that Avicebron or Avencebrol, who had for centuries been believed to be a Christian or Arabic Muslim philosopher, was instead identical with the Jewish Solomon ibn Gabirol. The centuries-long confusion was in part due to a content feature atypical in Jewish writings: Fons Vitæ exhibits an independence of Jewish religious dogma and does not cite Biblical verses or Rabbinic sources.
The progression in the Latinization of Gabirol's name seems to have been ibn Gabirol, Ibngebirol, Avengebirol. Avengebrol, Avencebrol, Avicebrol, and finally Avicebron. Some sources still refer to him as Avicembron, Avicenbrol, or Avencebrol.

Philosophy

Gabirol, in line 24 of his poem "כשרש עץ", claims to have written twenty philosophical works. Through scholarly deduction, the works' titles are known, but the texts of only two have been found.
Gabirol made his mark on the history of philosophy under his alias as Avicebron, known as one of the first teachers of Neoplatonism in Europe and the author of Fons Vitæ. As such, he is best known for the principle that all things, including soul and intellect, are composed of matter and form, and for his emphasis on divine will.
His role has often been likened to that of Philo: both were overlooked by their fellow Jews yet wielded significant influence over gentiles—Philo impacting early Christianity and ibn Gabirol shaping medieval Christian scholasticism. Additionally, both acted as cultural intermediaries—Philo bridging Hellenistic philosophy with the Oriental world, and ibn Gabirol connecting Greco-Arabic philosophy with the West.

''Fons Vitæ''

Fons Vitæ, originally written in Arabic under the title Yanbu' al-Hayat and later translated into Hebrew by Ibn Tibbon as,, lit. "Source of Life" is a Neo-Platonic philosophical dialogue between master and disciple on the nature of Creation and how understanding what we are can help us know how to live. "His goal is to understand the nature of being and human being so that he might better understand and better inspire the pursuit of knowledge and the doing of good deeds." The work stands out in the history of philosophy for introducing the doctrine that all things, including soul and intellect, are composed of matter and form, and for its emphasis on divine will.
In the closing sentences of the Fons Vitæ, ibn Gabirol further describes this state of "return" as a liberation from death and a cleaving to the source of life.
The work was originally composed in Arabic, of which no copies are extant. It was preserved for the ages by a translation into Latin in the year 1150 by Abraham ibn Daud and Dominicus Gundissalinus, who was the first official director of the Toledo School of Translators, a scholastic philosopher, and the archdeacon of Segovia, Spain. In the 13th century, Shem Tov ibn Falaquera wrote a summary of Fons ''Vitæ in Hebrew, and only in 1926 was the complete Latin text translated into Hebrew.
Fons Vitæ consists of five sections:
  1. matter and form in general and their relation in physical substances ;
  2. the substance which underlies the corporeality of the world ;
  3. proofs of the existence of intermediaries between God and the physical world ;
  4. proofs that these "intelligibiles" are likewise constituted of matter and form;
  5. universal matter and universal form.
Fons Vitæ posits that the basis of existence and the source of life in every created thing is a combination of "matter" and "form". The doctrine of matter and form informed the work's subtitle: "De Materia et Forma." Its chief doctrines are:
  1. Everything that exists may be reduced to three categories:
  2. # God
  3. # Matter and form
  4. # Will
  5. All created beings are constituted of form and matter.
  6. This holds true for both the physical world and the spiritual world, which latter are the connecting link between the first substance and the physical world.
  7. Matter and form are always and everywhere in the relation of "sustinens" and "sustentatum", "propriatum" and "proprietas''": substratum and property or attribute.