Todros ben Judah Halevi Abulafia facts for kids

Todros ben Judah Halevi Abulafia (born in 1247, died after 1300) was a Jewish poet. He mainly wrote poems in Hebrew, but he also wrote some in Arabic.

He collected his poems in a special book called a diwan. He named his collection Gan HaMeshalim veHaHidot, which means The Garden of Parables and Riddles. This book mostly contained his own Hebrew poems, but it also had poems by other writers. It even included 35 poems that were part of a poetic "debate" between Todros Abulafia and another poet, Phinehas Halevi. Experts like Angel Sáenz-Badillos believe Todros Abulafia was one of the best and most active writers in Christian Spain during the time of King Alfonso X and his son Sancho IV.

A Poet's Life in Spain

Todros Abulafia was born in 1247 in Toledo, Spain. He was a distant relative of another important person named Meir Abulafia. Todros was very smart and learned both Arabic and Christian poetry and literature well.

Working for the King

Early in his career, Todros became a courtier (a person who attends a royal court as an adviser or companion to the king). He worked for King Alfonso X of Castile. King Alfonso was known as Alfonso the Wise and Alfonso the Learned. His court was a big cultural center in Castile, which attracted many ambitious poets like Todros.

Besides being a poet, Todros Abulafia was also a diplomat (someone who represents their country in foreign affairs) and a financier (someone who manages large sums of money). In 1279, the king asked him to collect a very large amount of taxes from the Jewish community in Castile. The king needed this money for a religious military campaign. However, the money never reached the army because one of the king's sons used it for his own plans.

Facing Challenges

The king was very angry about the missing money. Two main tax collectors, including Abulafia's patron (someone who supported him), faced serious consequences. Some time later, Todros Abulafia and most other Jews in Castile were taken from a synagogue and arrested. They were told they would be released if a ransom was paid. Todros continued to write poems even while he was in prison. After he was released, he became a courtier again, this time for King Alfonso's son, Sancho IV. Not much is known about Todros Abulafia's life after the year 1298.

Todros Abulafia's Poetry

Todros ben Judah Halevi Abulafia's poetry was shaped by his life in Christian Spain. Even though Christian rulers had taken back Spain from the Moors 150 years earlier, Arabic was still spoken there.

Unique Poetic Style

His poetry was different in some ways from the poems written by earlier Jewish poets from Andalusia. These earlier poets had to leave Southern Spain during a big invasion in 1147–1148. However, some common ideas, like using hyperbole (exaggeration for effect), could still be seen in his work.

One example is a poem Todros wrote for Ibn Shoshan, a Jewish person who had just arrived in Toledo from Morocco. In this poem, called "Flowers' debate," the author describes a beautiful earth covered in flowers. A group of important flowers, like the red rose, the pale rose (called shoshan), and the narcissus, have a friendly competition. Each flower talks about its best qualities. But none of them could beat the pale rose, shoshan. The pale rose also represented Ibn Shoshan and his family, the person the poem honored. The pale rose won the debate because it showed the best qualities: "righteous, courageous, humble, philanthropic and praiseworthy."

Love and New Ideas

Abulafia's poems also continued the style of the troubadours. Troubadours were poets and musicians who were always welcomed in the court of Alfonso the Wise. This "troubadouresque fin’amor" (a type of courtly love poetry) was not usually found in older Andalusian Hebrew poetry.

Here is a small part of one of his poems, showing this style:

...Truly, it is enough for the man who loves her

to see her or to hear her words!
It is doctrine for every nobleman to make his life
a treadstone for her, and to lick the dust from her foot!
To suffer completely for her love,
for truly then God shall multiply her reward!
I shall set my heart to serve my love for her for ever
Never shall I ask for her to set me free!
As long as the sun rises in the East, or
As long as the birds sing of her!”

Peter Cole, a scholar, says that Todros's work stands out because it is "freshness and candor." He means that Todros brought a lively and honest personal feeling into his poems. This was something new for medieval Hebrew poetry. He often used irony, flipped old ideas around, or completely got rid of them to create new ways of writing poetry.

Gan HaMeshalim veHaHidot Rediscovered

After Todros Abulafia's death, his poetry was almost forgotten for more than 600 years. Then, in the 17th century, his diwan (collection of poems) was found and copied in Egypt. For the next few centuries, this copied book traveled between Iraq and India. It changed hands among collectors from different countries.

In the late 1800s, the book became the property of Sha'ul 'Abdullah Yosef. He was an Iraqi scholar and businessman who found the book while working in Hong Kong. It's not clear how the book ended up in Hong Kong. Yosef knew a lot about Hebrew, so he understood how valuable the book was. After he died in 1906, the book was given to David Yellin. Yellin was a leading expert in medieval Hebrew poetry at that time. Between 1934 and 1937, Yellin published the book in three volumes. This added about 1,200 new poems to the collection of medieval Hebrew writings.

See also

In Spanish: Todros Abulafia para niños