The Convergence of Judaism and Islam. Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

One Thousand Years of Cultural Harmony between Judaism and Islam r 253

with a sense of identity combining Jewish and Arabo-Islamic cultural val-
ues and ideas. Social and intellectual collaborations were common and
normal between Jews, Muslims, and Christians (Brann 1991, 1).
Shlomoh Ibn Gabirol (1020–57) was a Spanish poet and philosopher.
He is regarded as the major religious poet of the Arab-Jews, and a large
number of his poems have been preserved in prayer books of many Jewish
communities. Eight of his poems were discovered in the Mishaf, and they
appear on various occasions.
Ibn Gabirol is considered the founder of the new school of religious
poetry in Muslim Spain and thus the most important poet of this era
(Mirski 1992, 159, 298; Levin 1986, 92). More than any other poet, he is
responsible for the great change that occurred in Hebrew poetry under
the influence of Arabo-Islamic culture. As a follower of Sa ̔adiah Gaon
and Dunash, he is also seen as a poet who allowed deeper amalgamation
of Arabo-Islamic features with Jewish ideas and values in Hebrew poetry.

Arabo-Islamic Influence

Islamic Mysticism and Arabic Secular Poetry

The neo-Platonic School, founded in the third century by Plotinus, for-
mulated an idea concerning the human soul and its purpose. The ori-
gin of the human soul, before it was united with matter, existed in the
Eternal and Supreme, and thus its goal was to return to this high origin.
This idea was adapted and further developed by the Islamic neo-Platonic
school, which viewed God as the Eternal and the Supreme. The earliest
step was made by al-Kindi (d. 866), the first Muslim philosopher, then by
the Ikhwān al-Safā (Pure Brethren), a group of Muslim philosophers in
Basra, Iraq, of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Later, it reached its intel-
lectual fruition in the works of al-Farabi (872–950) and Ibn Sina (d. 1037)
(Levin 1986, 137).
The work of these neo-Platonic philosophers, mostly that of Ikhwān
al-Safā, was brought to Muslim Spain by the philosopher Hamid al-Din
al-Kermani (d. 1020) and studied by Ibn Gabirol, who eventually adopted
their ideas, which are clearly manifested in his poetry (Levin 1986, 139).
Among all the Jewish neo-Platonic philosophers of the Middle Ages,
Ibn Gabirol was the most original and significant; his ideas shaped the
core thinking of Jewish philosophy, theology, and Kabbalah (Jewish