IBN GABIROL (SOLOMON BEN JUDAH, Or AVICEBRON and AVENCEBROL to the Schoolmen) (c. 1021—c. 1058-1070), Jewish poet and philosopher, was born at Malaga. His early years were spent at Saragossa, where he came under the protection of Samuel ha-Nagid, the well known patron of learning. At the age of 16 he is supposed to have written poems including the `Anaq, a poem on grammar, partially extant. He first popularized the use of Arabic metres in Hebrew, and it is as a poet that he has been remembered by the Jews. To the liturgy he contributed many fine lyrical compositions, the best known being the philosophical Kether Malkfith (for the Day of Atonement) and the Azharoth, on the 613 precepts (for Shebhu`oth).
Ibn Gabirol's chief philosophical work, which was translated from Arabic into Latin by Johannes Hispalensis and Gundisalvi under the title, Fons Vitae, exercised a wide influence on the Schoolmen, though Jewish thinkers practically ignored it because of its non-religious attitude and its neo-Platonic inspiration. In it, Ibn Gabirol speaks of God as unknowable and transcendental, but he tries to save Him from being impersonal by making His wisdom the ground of all being and by admitting the activity of His will in the production of the universe. His views on the Will are peculiar, for he regards it as an hypostasis identifiable in itself with the Divine nature, but distinguishable inasmuch as it is active. Elsewhere he says it is to the world as soul to body, hold ing it together and penetrating it as a principle of movement. From the Will emanate the intelligences which, as creatures, must possess two factors, namely, universal matter and universal form. The former, which is the source of the potentiality and finite nature in spiritual beings, sustains the universal form which con fers the perfecting properties. The intelligences produce the corporeal world in which universal matter is differentiated into materia universalis corporalis, materia universalis caelestis, materia universalis naturalis and materia particularis naturalis. To these types of matter there are corresponding forms.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Besides the above mentioned works, Ibn Gabirol Bibliography.—Besides the above mentioned works, Ibn Gabirol wrote Islah al-akhldq, a popular ethical work (Arabic text and Eng. trans. by S. S. Wise, New York, 19o1) and a collection of moral man ims (Eng. trans. New York, 1925, Hebrew and English edit. by Ascher, 1859) ; Texts of the liturgical poems are to be found in the prayer-books ; others in Dukes and Edelmann, Treasures of Oxford (Oxford, 185o) ; Dukes, Shire Shelomoh (Hanover, 1858) ; S. Sachs, Shir ha-shirim asher li-Shelomoh (Paris, 1868, incomplete) ; Brody , Die weltlichen Gedichte des ... Gabirol (Berlin, 1897, etc.) . The Latin text of the Fons Vitae was published by C. Baeumker (Munster, 1892) . See S. Munk, Melanges de Philos. juive at arabe (1859) ; Witt mann, Die Stellung des hl. T. von Aquin zu Avencebrol (Munster, i9oo) and Zur Stellung Avencebrol's im Entwicklungsgang der arab ischen Philosophie (Munster, 19o5) ; D. Neumark, Gesch. d. jud. Philos. im Mittelalt. I. (1907) and I. Husik, Hist. of Mediaeval Jewish Philo sophy (1916) ; J. Guttmann, Die Philosophie des ibn Gabirol (Got tingen, 1889) ; D. Kaufmann, Studien caber Sal. ibn Gabirol (Budapest,