[2] His works, all written in Arabic and subsequently translated into Hebrew, Latin, and Spanish, entered the medical curriculum of European universities in the early 13th century and remained popular throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.

He corresponded with Saadya ben Joseph al-Fayyumi (882–942), one of the most influential figures in medieval Judaism, prior to his departure from Egypt.

Between the years 905–907 he travelled to Kairouan where he studied general medicine under Ishak ibn Amran al-Baghdadi, with whom he is sometimes confounded ("Sefer ha-Yashar," p. 10a).

The caliph enjoyed the company of his Jewish physician on account of the latter's wit and of the repartees in which he succeeded in confounding the Greek al-Hubaish when pitted against him.

Heinrich Grätz (Geschichte v. 236), while stating that Isaac Israeli lived more than one hundred years, gives the dates 845–940; and Steinschneider ("Hebr.

In 956 his pupil Dunash Ibn Tamim wrote an extensive commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, a mystical work of cosmogony which attributes great importance to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and their combinations in determining the structure of the universe.

In the eleventh century, Constantine Africanus, a professor at the prestigious Salerno school of medicine, translated some of Israeli's works into Latin.

Israeli's work was quoted and paraphrased by a number of Christian thinkers including Gundissalinus, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Vincent de Beauvais, Bonaventura, Roger Bacon and Nicholas of Cusa.

The only known quotation of Israeli's philosophy in a Muslim work occurs in Ghayat al-Hakim, a book on magic, produced in eleventh-century Spain, translated into Latin and widely circulated in the West under the title Picatrix.

His influence also extended to Moses Ibn Ezra (c. 1060–1139) who quotes Isaac Israeli without attribution in his treatise The Book of the Garden, explaining the meaning of Metaphor and Literal Expression.

But if Israeli was attacked by Ibn Ezra he was praised by other Biblical commentators, such as Jacob b. Ruben, a contemporary of Maimonides, and by Ḥasdai.

321) attribute the authorship to Israeli, because Abraham ibn Ḥasdai (see above), and Jedaiah Bedersi in his apologetical letter to Solomon ben Adret ("Orient, Lit."