The All-Encompassing Book

Abū Ya‘qūb Yūsuf ibn Ibrāhīm al-Baṣīr, in Hebrew, Joseph ben Abraham ha-Ro’eh, was a Karaite theologian who hailed from Iraq or Persia. Called al-Baṣīr (“the seer”) either because he was blind or as an honorific, he wrote in the fields of law and theology, the latter from the perspective of Basran kalām. Al-Baṣīr came under the influence of the Muslim theologian ‘Abd al-Jabbār (d. 1024/5) and maintained contact with Samuel ben Ḥofni Ga’on (d. 1034), whom he met in Baghdad. Around the year 1000, al-Baṣīr moved to Jerusalem, where there was a center of Karaite learning, and established himself as a teacher of the next generation of important Karaite scholars. The All-Encompassing Book and The Book of Distinction are both representative of the kalām-infused Karaite theology of his day.