ABSTRACT
Born in the Fayyum region of Egypt, Saadiah (882–942C.F.) was the first philosopher of Judaism to write systematic works. He was also a pioneering exegete, grammarian, lexicographer, liturgist and chronologist. Trained in Scripture and rabbinic law, he published the earliest version of his Hebrew–Arabic lexicon, the Egron, in 913, expanding it in phases, until by 930 it comprised over a thousand entries analysing biblical and post-biblical Hebrew usage. 1 His philosophic interests led him to open a correspondence with Isaac Israeli of Kairouan (c. 855–c. 955), the physician philosopher who, partly influenced by al-Kindī, initiated the tradition of Neoplatonic philosophy among Arabic-speaking Jews and died at over a hundred years of age. 2
