DUNASH BEN LABRAT (947-74)

Hebrew poet, grammarian and polemicist who was the first to use Arabic metres in his verses, thus inaugurating a new mode in Hebrew poetry.

His strictures on the Hebrew lexicon of Menahem ben Saruq provoked a quarrel that helped initiate a golden age in Hebrew philology.

Dunash was born either in Fés or in Baghdad and after travelling to Sura, Babylonia, studied there under a renowned master of Jewish learning Sa´adia ben Joseph. It was in Sura that he first composed his poems in Arabic metres, an innovation that amazed Sa´adia.

After a time, Dunash migrated to Córdoba in Moorish Spain then experincing a renaisance of Jewish culture under a powerful Jewish statesman and adviser to the caliph Hisdai ibn Shaprut (b. c. 915-975?).

A favourite of Hisdai´s, the philologist Menahem ben Saruq had written an important Hebrew lexicon, the first true Hebrew dictionary. Dunash wrote a devastating polemic against this work in which he combined personal attacks on Menahem with praise for Hisdai. Menahem lost favour with Hisdai and died not long afterward.

Menahem´s pupils answered Dunash with a polemic of their own, a quarrel that paved the way for a fresh examination of Hebrew grammar.

Dunash also wrote an unpublished treatise on grammar in which he reveals his understanding (unusual for his time) that, although Hebrew verbs are based on three-consonant roots, in some conjugations a root letter may be dropped.