Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
The Kuzari
The king of the Khazars questions a philosopher, a Christian, a Muslim and a rabbi – and is won over by the rabbi’s appeal to historical revelation.
Introduction
Judah Halevi, also one of the great Hebrew poets of medieval Spain, wrote the book in Arabic around 1140; Judah ibn Tibbon translated it into Hebrew in 1167. It takes up the story that the king of the Khazars, a people of the steppes north of the Caucasus, converted to Judaism around the eighth century. In five parts the rabbi explains to the king that faith rests not on philosophical proofs but on a historical revelation witnessed by a whole people at Sinai, and on a special bond between the Jewish people, the Hebrew language and the Land of Israel. The book criticises Aristotelian philosophy from within Jewish thought and was later taken up by religious Zionist thinkers.
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