THE PRESENT BOOK aims to acquaint readers with one of the most colourful, original, and influential Jewish figures of all times. Rabbi Sa'adyah ben Joseph Gaon (882–942) inhabited a world as far removed from our own culturally and intellectually as it is in time. The age in which he lived, the era of the geonim, was an extraordinarily dynamic phase of Jewish history, thanks in part to broad contact with Muslim culture—and through it with the legacy of the classical world—and to the proliferation of cults and sects within Judaism itself. Because the decisive influence of this age on the later development of Judaism is so little known to contemporary readers, I have attempted in the first chapter to provide a brief sketch of the geonic era and the world in which Sa'adyah was active. The second chapter sets forth all the details known to us concerning Sa'adyah's life— far more than we know about the lives of most of his contemporaries but a great deal less than would be needed to write a standard biography. The remaining six chapters are devoted to Sa'adyah's spiritual and intellectual endeavours in the fields of theology, biblical exegesis, linguistics, poetry, halakhah, and polemics.

Such an arrangement does not do justice to Sa'adyah's distinctive modes of thinking and writing, which defy neat classification, but it is unavoidable if one wishes to set down the main facets of his work as clearly as possible against the background of his predecessors and contemporaries. I have also attempted to compensate for the inevitable separation of related discussions with a fair number of cross-references within the book. In addition to supplying references and some brief notes which were lacking in the original, I have made a few minor changes with the English reader in mind.

Numerous passages in the book have been translated from Judaeo-Arabic, as well as from texts originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Many of the Judaeo- Arabic passages have been translated into Hebrew by other writers; except in a few cases where the original no longer survives I have consulted their translations together with the original sources.