Quotes:Ibn Gebirol

H. P. Blavatsky

Ibn Gebirol. Solomon Ben Yehudah: a great philosopher and scholar, a Jew by birth, who lived in the eleventh century in Spain. The same as Avicenna (q.v.).

Source: H. P. Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary, art. Ibn Gebirol

Zirkoff, Boris

Ibn Gebirol, Solomon ben Yehudah (known also as Avicebron). Jewish poet and philosopher, born in Malaga about 1021. He was educated at Saragossa, and died at Valencia, 1070. Wrote poems and hymns at the early age of sixteen, and a Hebrew grammar in verse at nineteen. While writing poetry in Hebrew, he produced profound philosophical works in Arabic. Occupied a first rank among the Jewish poets of the Middle Ages. In consequence of some personal allusions in one of his works, he was obliged to leave Saragossa, 1046, and to wander about Spain, until he obtained recognition and encouragement from Samuel Ibn Nagrela, also called Nagdilah, the Prime Minister of Moorish Spain, a great scholar himself. It was about 1050 that Ibn Gebirol wrote in Arabic his great philosophical work, the Me’qor ’Hayyim, or Fountain of Life, called in Latin De Materia Univer soli and Fons Vitae, which in reality is 579 a Kabbalistic work. Among his hymns, the best known is the Kether Molkhuth or Crown of the Kingdom. The writings of Ibn Gebirol are of great importance to scholars of both Western and Oriental traditions, and throw a good deal of light upon the stream of Kabalistic thought and the secret teachings which several centuries later became embodied in the Zohar.

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 11, pp. 578-579