ר' יונה אבן ג'נאח

Rav Yonah ibn Janach (c. 4750/990–c. 4815/1055), the Rivag, known in Arabic as Abu al-Walid Marwan ibn Janach and in English sources as Jonah ibn Janah, was a physician and the greatest of the Hebrew grammarians of the early generations in Spain. Born in Cordoba or its surroundings at the dawn of the golden age of Spanish Jewry, he learned in Lucena under Rav Yitzchak ibn Mar Shaul, a master of poetry, and Rav Yitzchak ibn Gikatilla, from whom he acquired his command of Hebrew and Arabic grammar. In his youth he tried his hand at verse, and later testified about himself that the song was not his craft; he turned instead to the dikduk and lexicon of lashon hakodesh, and before long was recognized as the authority in the field. When the Berbers besieged and sacked Cordoba around 4772/1012 he fled with many of its Jews, and after a period of wandering settled in Zaragoza, where he practiced medicine and remained to the end of his days.

In grammar he continued the path of Rav Yehuda Chayuj, upholding his foundation that every Hebrew root is built of three letters. His first sefer, Kitab al-Mustalchak — in Hebrew, Sefer HaHassagah — completed and corrected Chayuj’s two works, adding dozens of roots and clearing up ambiguities. Though written in honor of Chayuj, whose Torah he acknowledged as the source of most of his knowledge, the hasagot angered his admirers, chief among them Shmuel HaNagid, the vizier of Granada, who like the Rivag was counted among Chayuj’s disciples. A sharp exchange of pamphlets followed — the Risalat al-Tanbih, the Kitab al-Taswia, and at its peak the Kitab al-Tashwir, which he prized above his other works — a machloket never resolved in their lifetimes, from which later grammarians drew much benefit.

His crowning work is the Kitab al-Tanqich (Book of Exact Investigation), the Machberet HaDikduk, in two parts: Sefer HaRikmah, a complete description of the grammar of Tanach, the first of its kind, and Sefer HaShorashim, a full dictionary of the roots of the Mikra. Written like all his sefarim in Arabic, they were rendered into Hebrew by Rav Yehuda ibn Tibbon. Because of the Arabic, Rashi could not use them, and built his dikduk on the earlier method of Menachem ben Saruk and Dunash; but the chachamim who dealt with grammar and pshat in the generations after him leaned on the Rivag — above all the Ibn Ezra, who calls him Rabbi Marinos — and he is mentioned in the Moreh Nevuchim of the Rambam and in the Chovot HaLevavot of Rabbeinu Bachya. He also left one sefer outside the field of language: the Kitab al-Talchis, a concise dictionary of remedies and healing plants which the Rambam used extensively in his medical writings. Thought lost for centuries, a single manuscript was found in the Aya Sofia library in Istanbul, and in 2020 it was printed for the first time.