YITZHAQ IBN EZRA

(c. 1109–mid-twelfth century)

Peculiar, vulnerable, hypersensitive, and arrogant are some of the adjectives scholars have used to describe YITZHAQ IBN EZRA. And, indeed, both his poems and the often obscure letters by him that have emerged from the Cairo Geniza’s mountain range of correspondence suggest that Avraham Ibn Ezra’s son was a difficult and gloomy man. We know little more about his life in Spain than we do about his father’s during that period, and none of Yitzhaq’s poems from those early years have survived. He seems to have spent part of his childhood in Seville and lived in both Cordoba and Almería, though the precise dates and places of his birth and death are unknown. Fleischer proposes that he was born around 1109. The Geniza letters also indicate that the young Ibn Ezra was engaged in commerce of various sorts with Yehuda HaLevi’s friend Halfon Ben Netanel. By age eighteen he seems to have been a poet of considerable stature on the An-dalusian cultural scene. Some scholars question his relation to Yehuda HaLevi, but all the available evidence would appear to confirm that he was in fact HaLevi’s son-in-law. That said, for one reason or another—perhaps involving the younger poet’s gradual drift away from his family, friends, and faith—they had a falling-out in Egypt, and Yitzhaq decided not to accompany his distinguished father-in-law on the voyage to Acre. He didn’t even make the trip from Fustat (Old Cairo) to the port in Alexandria to see him off. Instead, he remained behind for the better part of a year—writing an elegy for HaLevi when news of his death reached Egypt—and later on he set out for Babylonia. We find him near Damascus in 1142, and a year later he was in Baghdad, studying with the leading Jewish intellectual of the East at the time, Natanel Ben ‘Ali, who was also known as Abu al-Barakat. When, some twenty years later, Natanel converted to Islam, Yithzaq appears to have followed him. Scholars have long suggested that the poem “Conversion” (below) was written by Yitzhaq about his having become a Muslim, perhaps under duress, and after he’d already reembraced Judaism. We have, however, no proof of any return to the fold, and such a move on the poet’s part would have been extremely dangerous, especially in the East, as the penalty for abandonment of the faith by a Muslim was execution. This and other strong evidence leads Fleischer to conclude that the poem is not by Yitzhaq Ibn Ezra. We also have contradictory evidence regarding Ibn Ezra’s death, which most likely occurred in the East.

On the whole, Yitzhaq Ibn Ezra’s poetry is powerful and accomplished in a classical Andalusian manner, though entirely lacking his father’s wit and humor. Stylistically, he was also far more conservative than his father. His tendency toward quotation of other poets and conventional application of the standard modes was pronounced, something that might be a reflection of his immaturity as a poet, and also of his activity in the East, where literary tastes had not evolved, and where he may have been leaning on his knowledge of the Andalusian tradition and, like his father, trying to keep it alive. Still, this approach led to accusations of plagiarism, and it also leaves one feeling that his work is derivative. Of the three poems and excerpts attributed to him andtranslated here, only the lines about HaLevi can be credited to Ibn Ezra without hesitation.

ON THE DEATH OF YEHUDA HALEVI

OVER HIS BOY

CONVERSION