The secret of love

Isaac ben Abraham Ibn Ezra, son of the famous Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1167), was raised among the Jewish Andalusi elites as a poet and intellectual. It is possible that Isaac was the son-in-law of Judah ha-Levi (ca. 1075–1141), with whom he traveled eastward toward Palestine in 1140, before parting ways in Alexandria. Isaac continued on to lands farther east, eventually studying with the Baghdadi Jewish philosopher and physician Abū ’l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (ca. 1085–ca. 1165). It was apparently under Abū ’l-Barakāt’s influence that Isaac temporarily converted to Islam, although accounts differ as to the reasons for this conversion and its seriousness. Like his father, Isaac was a prolific poet, primarily active during his early life in al-Andalus.