PAR?ON, SALOMON BEN ABRAHAM IBN

PAR?ON, SALOMON BEN ABRAHAM IBN (12^th century), lexicographer. Born in Qal'a, Spain, he was a student of Judah *Halevi and Abraham *Ibn Ezra. Par?on immigrated to Italy, where in 1160 at Salerno he completed his Ma?beret he-Arukh, a biblical lexicon written in Hebrew and his only extant work. On the one hand, the title is reminiscent of Mena?em b. Jacob ibn *Saruq's dictionary and, on the other, of Nathan b. *Jehiel's. He-Arukh comprises the whole of medieval Hebrew lexicography after *Ibn Jana? and is, as Par?on states in his introduction, an epitome of Ibn Jana?'s Book of Roots (Sefer ha-Shorashim, 1896). Par?on also acknowledges the use of excerpts from Ibn Jana?'s other books and from Judah b. David *?ayyuj, the Hebrew translator of Ibn Jana?'s Book of Roots. Ten years after Par?on's dictionary appeared Judah ibn *Tibbon claimed it was merely a plagiarism of Ibn Jana?'s lexicon. However, this claim is unjust because in addition to the necessity of taking into consideration the rather liberal medieval attitude toward utilizing the works of others, Ma?beret he-Arukh contains original material in its own right. For example, material pertaining to the development of religious ritual, which is of considerable historical interest, and original explanations of biblical passages are found in the work. The introduction to the dictionary comprises a compendium of biblical Hebrew grammar and terminates with a short excursus on medieval Hebrew prosody. Its appendix (appearing immediately after the introduction in S.G. Stern's 1844 edition) is entitled "About biblical matters, as to which one has to dispel one's doubts," and deals with problems of style and syntax following Ibn Jana?'s Kitab al-luma' (Sefer ha-Rikmah, 1964). The major importance of Ma?beret he-Arukh, however, was that, being written in Hebrew, it transferred to Christian countries the advances in Hebrew philology made under the influence of Arabic linguists in Spain. In his introduction Par?on asserts this to be one of his aims since he found that in Italy only the Ma?beret of Mena?em ibn Saruq was known. Accordingly, he followed the example of his teacher, Abraham Ibn Ezra, the most important popularizer of Spanish scholarship in Christian lands. The Ma?beret he-Arukh became an extremely popular work, not least because of the fluency, lucidity, and purity of Par?on's Hebrew style, a style befitting a pupil of Abraham Ibn Ezra.

bibliography:

S.G. Stern (ed.), Salomon ben Abraham ibn Par?on, Ma?beret he-Arukh (1844); W. Bacher, in: J. Winter and A. Wuensche, Juedische Literatur, 2 (1897), 190; idem, in: zaw, 11 (1891), 35–99.

[Yehuda Elitzur]