The Kuzari

Timeline

1. 1120–1139Toledo / Al-Andalus · CastileHalevi was active as a poet and physician in Granada, Toledo, and elsewhere, while composing in Arabic a dialogue defending the Jewish faith. Framed around the legend of the Khazars' conversion, it rebuts in turn the claims of philosophers, Christians, and Muslims.
2. c. 1140–1141Toledo / Al-Andalus · CastileAround 1140 the Kuzari was finalized, and Halevi promptly left al-Andalus for the Holy Land. The final version emphasizes the priority of the Holy Land, the people, and revelation, and may be read as the author's intellectual summation in abandoning a settled Iberian life for Zion.
3. c. 1167Provençal and Mediterranean Jewish communities · ProvenceAfter Judah ibn Tibbon and others translated the Kuzari into Hebrew, the book became a classic of the anti-Aristotelian camp in Provençal, Italian, and Ottoman Jewish communities. Modern Jewish intellectual history still regards it as a representative work of 12th-century philosophy of faith.