IBN GABIROL

born c. 1022, , Mlaga, Caliphate of Crdoba died c. 1058, /70, Valencia, Kingdom of Valencia in full Solomon Ben Yehuda Ibn Gabirol, Arabic Abu Ayyub Sulayman Ibn Yahya Ibn Gabirut, Latin Avicebron, or Avencebrol one of the outstanding figures of the Hebrew school of religious and secular poetry during the Jewish Golden Age in Moorish Spain. He was also an important Neoplatonic philosopher. Additional reading A brief biography may be found in Israel Davidson and Israel Zangwill, Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol (1923). Other biographical treatments are in H. Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 3 (1956); S.W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 78 (1958), which also gives a characterization of the poet's works; and F.P. Bargebuhr, El Palacio de la Alhambra en el siglo XI (1966; The Alhambra: A Cycle of Studies on the Eleventh Century in Moorish Spain, 1968), with translations of secular poemsbiographical information is contained in the preface to the English edition; and Salomo ibn Gabirol: Ostwestliches Dichtertum (1976). See also Ermenegildo Bertola, Salomon ibn Gabirol (Avicebron): vita, opere e pensiero (1953). Religious poems Translated in Davidson and Zangwill (see above); and Bernard Lewis, The Kingly Crown (1961). Ethical treatise Stephen S. Wise (ed. and trans.), The Improvement of the Moral Qualities (1902). Philosophy Clemens Baeumker, Fount of Life (1892); John Goheen, The Problem of Matter and Form in the De Ente et Essentia of Thomas Aquinas (1940); H.E. Wedeck (trans.), The Fountain of Life (1963); J. Guttmann, Die Philosophie des Salomon ibn Gabirol (1889); and Philosophies of Judaism (1964), pp. 89103, 421423.