For a time he was the assistant of the great Jewish statesman Hasdai ibn Shaprut, and was involved in both literary and diplomatic matters; his dispute with Dunash ben Labrat, however, led to his downfall.
The dictionary had scarcely been completed when an opponent to its author arose in Dunash ben Labrat, who had come to Spain from Fez, Morocco, and who wrote a criticism on the work, which he prefaced by a eulogistic dedication to Hasdai.
The slanders of his personal enemies likewise seem to have aroused Hasdai's anger against Menahem to such a pitch that the latter, at the command of the powerful statesman, suffered bodily violence, being cast out of his house on the Sabbath day, shamed, and imprisoned.
[6] Menahem's pupils also defended their teacher, and in response to Dunash's criticism wrote a detailed refutation which was marked by polemical acumen and exact grammatical knowledge, today preserved in the ducal library of Parma.
[9] Thus the most flourishing period of Hebrew philology, whose chief representatives were Hayyuj and ibn Janah, began with Menahem's work and teachings.
[3] He avoids, however, any open comparison of the language of the Bible with that of the Quran, notwithstanding the precedent furnished him by Saadia and Judah ibn Kuraish, authors whom he quotes in his dictionary.
[7] The Mahberet[1], as Menahem entitled his dictionary, was the first complete lexical treatment of the Biblical vocabulary composed in Hebrew in which the view then prevailing, that there were both uniliteral and biliteral roots, was definitely systematized and worked out.
Menahem ben Saruq's dictionary was edited by Filipowski (London, 1854)[2], and addenda from the Bern manuscript of the "Mahberet" were published by D. Kaufmann in "Z. D. M. G." xl.