work of Sa’adia Gaon, Ibn Ezra composed one of the most elegant commen-
taries on the Hebrew Bible. It combined mastery of rabbinic literature,
Aristotelian philosophy, and the literary and linguistic sensitivities of the
age. Commenting on Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and all your soul,” Ibn Ezra notes, “The heart is knowl-
edge and is the pseudonym for the enlightening spirit and the prime mover.
... The soul is spirit of the body of the body that desires.”
Ibn Ezra, moreover, periodically used his commentary on the Torah as a
vehicle to defend Judaism from its Muslim, Christian, and philosophical
assailants. For example, by the tenth century there was a prevailing notion
among Christian and Muslim astrologers that Jews were closely aligned with
the planet Saturn, regarded by astrologers as the most malevolent of the plan-
ets. This notion had originated much earlier among Roman astrologers such
as Tacitus before finding its way into the writings of Saint Augustine and
Muslim philosophers such Abu Ma’shar, and would remain a core element of
Christian and Muslim critiques of Judaism until the sixteenth century.
In response, Ibn Ezra recast the influence of Saturn in a more positive light
from malevolence to fear of heaven, initially in his work on astrology, Reshit
Hokhma, and later in his biblical commentary. In his commentary on the Ten
Commandments, Ibn Ezra linked the nine known planets to the last nine of
the ten commandments. Saturn, he claimed, coincided with the command-
ment to keep the Sabbath, noting, “It is therefore unfit for one to occupy
himself on that day with everyday matters. On the contrary, one should
devote himself on the Sabbath day solely to the fear of God.”
Ibn Nagrela was also an accomplished scholar in his own right. He was the
greatest theologian of Islam anywhere in Spain, and wrote a critique of the
Qur’an. He composed poetry using the finest metric virtuosity of any premod-
ern Hebrew poetry. He developed the wine-song to its apex, and wrote war
poems in Hebrew in which he attributed his military victories to divine prov-
idence. Typical among these, and indicative of his profound sense of greatness,
was the poem “Ani David Le-Dori” (I am the David of my generation).
His stature as nagidand vizier challenged the notion that Jews’ lack of sov-
ereignty was a result of a divine punishment. For this reason, some Muslims
regarded his high position as scandalous and a violation of Muslim law. Such
discontent was galvanized by Ibn Nagrela’s arrogance. During his lifetime,
though, criticism against him remained muted and dormant.
After his death in 1056, these tensions surfaced and were directed at his son,
Joseph ibn Samuel. Ibn Samuel inherited his father’s status as nagidand was a
courtier, but was not the royal vizier. Soon after his father’s death, there appeared
a scathing polemical attack against him. In 1066, Muslim rioters destroyed the
Jewish community of Granada, in retrospect the beginning of the end of Jewish
life in Muslim Spain. During the ensuing decades, a Berber invasion brought to
power a series of fundamentalist Muslim rulers who were intolerant of Jews.
The Jews of Islam 71