Dunash ben Labrat
920 CE–990 CE · Rishonim · Fez
Dunash ha-Levi ben Labrat (c. 920–c. 990) was a poet and grammarian who transformed Hebrew letters. Born in Fez and educated in Baghdad under Saadia Gaon, he was drawn to Córdoba by Hasdai ibn Shaprut. There he made his lasting innovation: adapting the quantitative meter of Arabic poetry to Hebrew, he founded the Andalusian school of Hebrew verse whose forms would carry through Ibn Gabirol, Yehuda HaLevi and beyond — and his Sabbath hymn Dror Yikra is still sung today. As a grammarian he advanced the analysis of Hebrew by triliteral roots, and his famous critique of Menachem ben Saruk's Machberet reshaped the field.
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FezפאסMorocco
What they did here
Born in Fez, Morocco, around 920.
About Fez
Fez (Fas), in north-central Morocco, was founded by Idris I in 789 and expanded by Idris II in 809. The Qarawiyyin mosque, founded in 857-859 by Fatima al-Fihri, grew into one of the Islamic world's great centres of learning. Under the Marinids (13th-15th centuries) Fez was again the capital and gained many madrasas. Scholars and Sufis such as Ibn Khaldun and al-Wansharisi worked there, and the Tijani order has been centred in the city since 1789. Fez also had one of Morocco's oldest and largest Jewish communities. The poet Dunash ben Labrat was born there, Maimonides lived there around 1159-1165, and Jews later lived in the Mellah beside the Marinid royal district.
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Dunash ben Labrat’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
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