Abraham ibn Daud

Abraham ibn Daud (אַבְרָהָם בֶּן־דָּוִד הַלֵּוִי אִבְּן דָּאוּד; ابراهيم بن داود) was a Spanish-Jewish astronomer, historian and philosopher; born in Córdoba, Spain about 1110; who was said to have died in Toledo, Spain, a martyr about 1180. He is sometimes known by the abbreviation Rabad I or Ravad I. His maternal grandfather was Isaac Albalia . Some scholars believe he was the Arabic-into-Latin translator known as “Avendauth.” His chronicle, a work written in Hebrew in 1161 under the title of Sefer ha-Qabbalah (ספר הקבלה; some manuscripts give the title as Seder ha-Qabbalah, i.e. the "Order of Tradition"), in which he fiercely attacked the contentions of Karaism and justified Rabbinic Judaism by the establishment of a chain of traditions from Moses to his own time, is replete with valuable general information, especially relating to the time of the Geonim and to the history of the Jews in Spain. In his book he attempted to explain how the pre-Inquisition Spanish Jewish community became the centre of the Jewish world by claiming that four rabbis from Babylonia, which had been the centre of Jewish scholarship for centuries, were travelling across the Mediterranean by ship in 990. Their ship was captured by a royal Spanish fleet and all four rabbis were sold into slavery at different points around the Mediterranean. In each place where the rabbis were sold as slaves, the local Jewish communities bought their freedom. One of the slaves was Rabbi Hanoch ben Moshe who was freed in the Spanish city of Córdoba. When he began attending Torah classes and giving brilliant answers to questions, the community recognized him as a prodigious scholar and made him their leader; this transferred what Dara Horn called the 'crown of Torah' from Babylonia to Spain. The account described in Sefer ha-Qabbalah contains numerous impossibilities and inaccuracies. Jewish historian Gerson Cohen noted that the alleged leader of the Spanish royal fleet, Abd al-Rahman III, died some thirty years before the story took place, and that the legend of Rabbi Moshe, disguised as a pauper, surprising scholars in a Torah study session was nearly identical to the rise of Hillel the Elder.