Moshe Ben Jacob Ibn Ezra was a Rabbi, poet, and philosopher. He was born in Granada and eventually migrated to Lucena, considered “the city of poetry” at the time, where he studied under Isaac ibn Ghayyat. He was a good friend of Rabbi Halevi, who’d also come to Lucena to study. However, “in 1090 a decisive change took place in his life: Granada was captured by the Almoravides, its Jewish community was destroyed, and the members of the Ibn Ezra family dispersed.”1 Ezra was taken in by patrons in Christian Spain but was never able to return to where he was born. His life experiences of exile and longing are reflected in his Kinot, which mostly dealt with life and death and reflections of material vanity. They are meditative poems that end with the “inexorability of divine judgment.”1 These poems are mostly written in strophic rhyming form, and, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, “They are considered among the finest in the Hebrew piyyut”1.
A linguistic scholar, he also wrote a treatise on rhetorics and poetry, “Shirat Yisrael (Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa al-Mudhākara)”. In the treaties, he explained the significance of his use of, “poetic ornaments” (rhetorical forms and metaphorical language) as a means to “embellish the content of the poem.”1 He uses “many of his examples of “ornaments” or metaphorical language from the Bible”1 to adorn his poetry with religious significance. The use of biblical metaphors is practiced by the medieval Jewish poets in this collection and by many other medieval Jewish poets.
His poems are considered “prosodic perfection”1 by the Arab scholars in his region. The musical flow of his poetry is likely due to the strophic form styling of the poems – a style that draws influence from the structure of Jewish prayer, which also evokes a musical sense.