Abraham ibn Daud

Abraham ibn Daud (Hebrew: אברהם אבן דאוד‎; Arabic: ابراهيم بن داود‎‎) was a Spanish-Jewish astronomer, historian, and philosopher; born at Cordoba, Spain about 1110; died in Toledo, Spain, according to common report, a martyr about 1180. He is sometimes known by the abbreviation Rabad I or Ravad I. His mother belonged to a family famed for its learning.

Ibn Daud was the first to introduce the phase of Jewish philosophy which is generally attributed to Maimonides and which differs from former systems of philosophy mainly in its more thorough systematic form derived from Aristotle. Accordingly, Hasdai Crescas mentions Ibn Daud as the only Jewish philosopher among the predecessors of Maimonides (Or Adonai, ch. i.). But having been completely overshadowed by Maimonides' classical work, the Moreh Nebukim, Abraham ibn Daud's Emunah Ramah ("Sublime Faith"), a work to which Maimonides himself was indebted for many valuable suggestions, received scant notice from later philosophers.

The only Jewish philosophical works that Ibn Daud had before him, according to his own statement ("Emunah Ramah," p. 2, or in German trans., p. 3), were Saadia's Emunot we-De'ot, and "The Fountain of Life" by Solomon ibn Gabirol. On the one hand, he fully recognizes the merits of Saadia Gaon, although he does not adopt his views on the freedom of the will, notwithstanding that the solution of this problem was to be the chief aim and purpose of his whole system ("Emunah Ramah," p. 98; German trans., p. 125). On the other hand, his attitude toward Gabirol is entirely antagonistic, and even in the preface to his "Emunah Ramah" he pitilessly condemns Gabirol's "Fountain of Life." See Kaufmann, "Studien über Solomon ibn Gabirol," Budapest, 1899.

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