Abraham ibn Daud
Also known as Raavad I
1110 CE–1180 CE · Rishonim · Cordoba
Abraham ibn Daud (c. 1110–1180), known as Raavad I, was a Spanish historian, astronomer and the first Jewish philosopher to systematically draw on Aristotle—a generation before Maimonides. His Sefer HaKabbalah ('Book of Tradition,' 1161) traced the unbroken chain of rabbinic transmission to defend Rabbinic Judaism, and his philosophical Emunah Ramah sought to reconcile reason and faith. He is said to have died a martyr in Toledo.
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CordobaקורדובהAl-Andalus, Spain
What they did here
Born in Córdoba, in Muslim Spain, around 1110; grandson of the scholar Isaac Albalia.
Cordoba in this era
In the 10th century Cordoba, capital of the Umayyad caliphate, was one of the largest cities in Europe and the centre of Andalusi learning. Under the patronage of the Jewish courtier Hasdai ibn Shaprut it also became the first home of Hebrew grammar and poetry in Spain: Menahem ben Saruq and Dunash ben Labrat worked there, and the grammarian Ibn Janah was born there before moving to Zaragoza. After the caliphate collapsed (1031) and the Almohads took the city (1148), many Jews left; Maimonides, born there in 1138 (some sources say 1135), left with his family.
About Cordoba
Córdoba, on the Guadalquivir in Andalusia, southern Spain, came under Roman rule in the 3rd century BCE and, as Colonia Patricia, became capital of the province of Baetica; Seneca was a native. Taken by Muslim forces in 711 or 712, it became the seat of the Umayyad emirate founded by Abd al-Rahman I in 756 and of the caliphate proclaimed in 929, which ended in 1031. Its Great Mosque was begun in the 780s. The city was the birthplace of the Islamic scholars Ibn Hazm, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), later its chief judge, and the Quran commentator al-Qurtubi, and of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (usually dated 1138). Ferdinand III of Castile captured Córdoba in 1236, and the mosque became a cathedral.
In Cordoba at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Abraham ibn Daud’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Abraham ibn Daud’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Graeco-Roman world
Works
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