Primitive Valencian Jewish quarter
The primitive Valencian Jewish quarter had as limits the door of Xarea and to the north the old alcasseria or Muslim market. During the Muslim occupation it would have a relatively small population, dedicated to crafts and commerce, with some specialists dedicated to the study of the Law and the Jewish traditions.
In Spain this was the Golden Age of Judaism in poetry and philosophy. For instance, to the Islamic Valencia came and spent spent the last years of his life a Jewish philosopher of great importance, named Ibn Gabirol, shortly before his conquest by El Cid around 1090.
The philosopher Ibn Gabirol (Avicebrón
Solomon Ibn Gabirol was the first Hebrew philosopher of the Iberian Peninsula. Born in Malaga around 1030, he moved from Andalusia to a Jewish community in Zaragoza in dispute with that of Granada and spent his last years in Valencia, where he died young around the age of thirty.
Logos, eternal ideas and divine will
Ibn Gabirol was an outstanding philosopher of Spain. He was concerned about the relationship between God and the world. Ancient thinker Philo of Alexandria had developed the theory of the Logos which he received from the neoplatonic philosophers. But the Jewish scholar Gabirol modifies the theory in two points: he introduces the concept of divine will, as a middle term between God and Emanations of inanimate and animate beings, which consequently do not appear as an inevitable mechanical necessity. In addition, he considered Matter as one of the first emanations, being then spiritual, and this “materiality” an accessory property of the spirit.
The source of life (Meqor Hayym)
By a rather strange paradox this most important work, Meqor Hayyim (“The Source of Life”) was studied more zealously by Christian philosophers than Hebrews and translated from Arabic as Fons Vitae and the author was known as Avicebron. His ideas about the creation and spiritualistic matter also influenced in the thirteenth century the Jewish mystic movement of Kabbalah.
In the cultural aspect, they contributed to the introduction in the West through Spain (Sepharad) of oriental letters, poetry and philosophy and of Classical Greece, through translations into Arabic and Hebrew, which were translated in the schools of Languages to Latin and Spanish.
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