Abū ʾl-Walīd "Yonah" Ibn Ḥasday ha-Levi

Jonah (Abū ʾl-Walīd) ibn Ḥasday ha-Levi was a grammarian and poet in Lucena from the end of the tenth century through the early part of the eleventh. We know of him from later quotations. According to Moses ibn Ezra (Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara, p. 31v), Ibn Ḥasday, to whom he gives the title rāʾīs (nasi), lived and worked as a teacher in Lucena between the second and third generations, alongside Abū Zakariyya ben Ḥanīga and Abū ʿAmr (Abraham) ibn Yaqwā—that is, immediately after, or at the same time as, the disciples of Menahem ibn Sarūq and Dunash ben Labraṭ, and before grammarians like Jonah ibn Janāḥ, Isaac ibn Yashūsh, and Samuel ibn Naghrella entered the scene. Moses ibn Ezra places him in the generation of the Lucena poets Abū Ibrahim ibn Barūn and Abū Sulayman Ibn Rashlā.

Jonah ibn Janāḥ (Rikma, p. 175) considered Ibn Ḥasday one of the most distinguished teachers of the Hebrew language. He cites Ibn Ḥasday’s opinion that it was possible to defend the existence of a supposed root, nqḥ, used to conjugate the verb laqaḥ (take) in the imperfect (halakh-yelekh type) because the Hebrew language does not usually assimilate the letter lamed, but rather nun (despite the fact that Ḥayyūj himself defended the existence of this particular assimilation). Jonah ibn Janāḥ alludes to a long conversation on this matter with his teacher Ibn Ḥasday. He also includes in one of his tracts (p. 317) another interpretation of the imperatives of weak second radical verbs. Abraham ibn Ezra, in his Sefer Moznayim (p. 68*), presents Ibn Ḥasday’s theory on the value of the dagesh which indicates assimilation in the flexion of the verbs, but he does not allude to any specific treatise by Ibn Ḥasday.

It seems certain that Abū ʾl-Walīd Jonah ibn Ḥasday and Abū ʿAmr Joseph ibn Ḥasday were brothers. Almost nothing else is known about this author and his work.

José Martínez Delgado

Bibliography

Ibn Ezra, Abraham. Sefer Moznayim, intr. and ed. L. Jiménez Patón and A. Sáenz-Badillos (Cordova: El Almendro, 2002).

Ibn Ezra, Moses. Sefer ha-ʿIyyunim ve-ha-Diyyunim: ʿAl ha-Shira ha-ʿIvrit (Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa ʾl-Mudhākara), ed. A. S. Halkin (Jerusalem: Hoṣaʾat Meqiṣe Nirdamim, 1975).

Ibn Janāḥ, Jonah. Opuscules et traités d’Abou 'l-Walid Merwan ibn Djanah de Cordoue, ed. Joseph Derenbourg and Hartwig Derenbourg (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1880).

———. Sefer ha-Riqma = Kitāb al-luma. Ab Jonah Ibn Ganah lingua Arabica conscriptus, hebraica vertit Jehudah ibn Tibbon, ed. Michael Wilensky, publ. David Tené (Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1976).

Sáenz-Badillos, Angel, and Judit Targarona. Diccionario de autores judíos (Sefarad. Siglos X–XV) (Cordova: El Almendro, 1988), p. 26.

Cite this page

José Martínez Delgado. "Ibn Ḥasday, Jonah (Abū ʾl-Walīd) ha-Levi." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2013. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>