Todros ben Judah Halevi Abulafia (1247 – after 1300) was a Jewish poet who wrote primarily in Hebrew.
Abulafia collected his poems in diwan, which he called Gan HaMeshalim veHaHidot (The Garden of Parables and Riddles).
Also included were 35 poems that represented a poetic debate between Todros Abulafia and the poet Phinehas Halevi.
In the poem the pale rose, shoshan, won the debate of the flowers because it presented the best characteristics: "righteous, courageous, humble, philanthropic and praiseworthy.
[5]Todros led a life of adventures, and "prosperous sensuality"[6] and this sexual realism with some degree of lustfulness gets reflected in many of his poems.
But every Arab girl has charm and beauty which capture the heart and alleviate frustration.She looks as lovely as if dressed in golden embroidery, nevertheless she is naked.
As long as the birds sing of her!”[8]In discussing Abulafia's poetry, Peter Cole states: "Above all, Todros’s work is distinguished by its freshness and candor: he managed to introduce a vivid (though not always straight forward) personal dimension into his verse that went well beyond anything medieval Hebrew poetry had seen before him.
He filled the classical conventions with irony, turned them on their heads, or did away with them altogether and created new poetic space in which to work.
For the next few centuries, this copied manuscript traveled between Iraq and India, changing hands among antiquarian collectors from different countries.
After his death in 1906, the manuscript became the possession of David Yellin, who was a leading scholar in medieval Hebrew poetry at that time.
Yellin published the manuscript between 1934 and 1937 in three volumes, adding around twelve hundred poems to "the medieval Hebrew canon".