ISAAC

ISAAC (Ishak ; late 12^th or early 13^th century), Spanish-Hebrew poet. Isaac is only known from his Mishlei Arav or Mishlei Musar, a translation of an Arabic text which is no longer extant, comprising proverbs, ethical poems, and prose passages. The material is divided into 50 sections called "gates." The last gate includes admonitions and proverbs in poetic form. The most interesting of them is ?idat ha-Nazir ve-ha-So?er ("The Riddle of the Nazirite and the Merchant"), an allegorical tale which in character and presentation is reminiscent of *Ben ha-Melekh ve-ha-Nazir ("The Prince and the Hermit") of Abraham *Ibn ?asdai. These proverbs are of great importance for research into the motifs of Hebrew proverbs and poetry, and they also shed light upon the literary taste of Isaac's time. Several of them are already cited by Menahem b. Solomon *Meiri (1249–1316) in his Kiryat Sefer (Smyrna, 1863–1881). The proverbs and poems in the supplement to Miv?ar ha-Peninim of *Jedaiah ha-Penini Bedersi (Venice, 1546) are taken in their entirety from the Mishlei Arav. In those poems written in the form of an acrostic the name Ishak appears. According to Steinschneider, the author of the Mishlei Arav was in fact Isaac b. Krispin, author of the Sefer ha-Musar mentioned in the Ta?kemoni of *al-?arizi, in which case he lived at a much earlier date. His book has been published once only in serial form by S. Sachs in Ha-Levanon (vols. 2–6, 1865–69).

bibliography:

Steinschneider, Uebersetzungen, 884–7; Schirmann, Sefarad, 2 (1960²), 60–66; A.M. Habermann, in: Sinai, 25 (1945), 288–99; Davidson, O?ar, 4 (1933), 423f.

[Abraham David]