ראב"ד הראשון

Rav Avraham ibn Daud HaLevi (c. 4870/1110–c. 4940/1180), known as the Ravad I — the first Ravad — was a historian, philosopher, and astronomer of Sefarad. Born in Cordoba, he was a grandson, through his mother, of Rav Yitzchak Albalia, and learned under his uncle Rav Baruch ibn Albalia. When the Almohads invaded, he fled to Christian Castile and settled in Toledo, where he was niftar al kiddush Hashem around 1180.

His Sefer HaKabbalah (Book of Tradition), written about 1160, sets out the chain of the mesorah from Moshe Rabbeinu down to his own generation, defending Rabbinic Judaism against the claims of the Karaim, and preserves a wealth of information on the era of the Geonim and on the Jews of Spain. It contains the well-known account of the four captive rabbis who were taken at sea and ransomed by different communities — one of them, Rav Chanoch ben Moshe, redeemed in Cordoba and raised to lead its Torah center — through which he explained how Sefarad became a hub of Torah. The work formed one part of a larger historiographic project, Doros Olam. Sources vary on the details of the Four Captives account, including the captive rabbis’ place of origin, and on the exact year Sefer HaKabbalah was written (about 1160–1161).

In philosophy his major work is Emunah Ramah (The Sublime Faith), written in Arabic in 1168 and preserved in two Hebrew translations, one by Rav Shlomo ibn Labi and one by Shmuel Motot. He was the first to bring into Jewish thought the Aristotelian approach usually associated with the Rambam, and he set out to show the harmony between the fundamentals of the Torah and those of philosophy while holding that the Torah is to be preferred. His sefer was studied closely in the circle of Rav Chasdai Crescas, who counted him the one Jewish philosopher among the Rambam’s predecessors; in the wider world it was overshadowed by the Rambam’s Moreh Nevuchim, which appeared some thirty years later.

His Sefer HaKabbalah remains a principal source for the history of the Geonim and of Spanish Jewry.