the golden era of Jewish literature and making of Spain the intellectual centre of all Jewry.
Solomon ibn Gabirol was not merely the first Jewish philosopher in Spain, he was the first Spanish philosopher, that is, he was the first philosophical writer in Andalusia. Ibn Badja, the first Mohammedan philosopher in Spain, was born at least a half century after Gabirol. The birth of Gabirol is generally placed in 1021 and his death in 1058, though some have put it as late as 1070.
The fate of Gabirol in the history of Jewish literature was a peculiar one. Highly celebrated as a synagogal poet in the Sephardic as well as Ashkenazic community, his fame as a great philosopher was early overshadowed by his successors, and his chief work, the "Fountain of Life," was in the course of time quite forgotten. The Arabic original was lost and there was no Hebrew translation. The Tibbonides, Judah, Samuel and Moses, who translated everything worth while in Jewish philology, science and philosophy from Arabic into Hebrew, either did not know of Gabirol's masterpiece or did not think it important enough to translate. To judge from the extant fragments of the correspondence between Samuel ibn Tibbon and Maimonides, it would seem that both were true; that is that Samuel ibn Tibbon had no access to Gabirol's "Fons Vitae," and that if he had had such access, Maimonides would have dissuaded him from translating it. Maimonides actually tells his translator 82 that the only books worth studying are those of Aristotle and his true commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Averroes. Alfarabi and Avicenna are also important, but other writings, such as those of Empedocles, Pythagoras, Hermes, Porphyry, represent a pre-Aristotelian philosophy which is obsolete, and are a waste of time. The books of Isaac Israeli on the "Elements" and on "Definitions," are no better, seeing that Israeli was only a physician and no philosopher. He is not familiar with the "Microcosmus" of Joseph ibn Zaddik, but infers from a knowledge of the man that his work is based upon the writings of the "Brothers of Purity"; and hence, we may add, not strictly Aristotelian, and not particularly important. Not a word is here said about Gabirol, apparently because Samuel ibn Tibbon had not inquired about him. But from Maimonides's judgment concerning the works of "Empedocles," we may legitimately infer that he would have been no more
