Medieval alchemy, Kabbalah and Islamic esotericism
Isaac Israeli ben Solomon
Isaac Israeli the Elder · Abu Ya'qub Ishaq ibn Sulayman al-Isra'ili
A court physician in Kairouan and the first Jewish writer to build a philosophy out of the Arabic Plotinus. Emanation enters Jewish thought here, three centuries before anybody calls anything Kabbalah.
- Dates
- c. 855 – c. 955
- Dating
- approximate dates
- Born
- Egypt
- Died
- Kairouan
The life
He practised medicine in Egypt and then at the Fatimid court in Kairouan, and wrote on fevers, urine and diet as well as on definitions and the elements.
Place in the tradition
He is generally called the father of medieval Jewish Neoplatonism. What he passes on is a structure — a First Cause, intellect, soul, and a descent in which each stage is dimmer than the one above — that the sefirot will later be fitted into.
a note on the record
History and later legend
His dates are not settled. Biographers agree he lived to about a hundred and disagree about which years: Sa'id al-Andalusi gives 932, Abraham ibn Hasday 942, and Dunash ibn Tamim's commentary of 956 implies only that he was dead by then.
the written record
Principal works
-
early 10th century
Book of Definitions
Kitab al-Hudud
Short definitions of philosophical terms, and the earliest Jewish statement of a Neoplatonic descent from a First Cause through intellect and soul.