He who stretched out the heavens

Born in Córdoba, in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) into a leading Jewish family, Samuel ben Joseph ha-Levi ha-Nagid became the prototypical Andalusi Jewish courtier, poet, talmudic scholar, and communal leader, and an important patron of Jewish learning. Samuel was educated in Hebrew and Arabic literature and, although his family suffered during political upheavals at the outset of the eleventh century, he became a secretary, chief minister, and even a military commander for the Berber Zirid ruler of Granada. More than 1,700 of Samuel ha-Nagid’s poems survive, including war poems, ethical verses, and panegyrics. Later scholars write of his prolific contributions to Hebrew linguistics, but his treatises on this topic are largely lost. There is some evidence that he engaged in a religious polemic with the Muslim polymath Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm (994–1064), although the precise contours of this exchange remain uncertain. He also composed an influential legal compendium. This, too, survives only in fragments.