Judah Ibn Tibbon

Judah ibn Tibbon (c. 1120–1190) was a Provençal Jewish physician and one of the earliest major translators of Jewish philosophical and scientific works from Arabic into Hebrew. Active in Lunel in southern France, he became closely associated with the circle of scholars there and helped establish a tradition of Hebrew translation that shaped medieval Jewish learning. He is often called the “father of Hebrew translators” and is regarded as the founder of the Tibbonid family of translators. His work made influential Arabic-language texts accessible to Hebrew readers and contributed to the spread of rationalist thought in Jewish communities of medieval Europe.