Unknown Miniaturist, French (active c. 1235) · Public domain

Ibn Ezra was among the most influential biblical commentators of the medieval Jewish world, a poet and philosopher from Muslim Spain whose grammatical and philosophical readings of scripture became foundational texts of Jewish exegesis for centuries after him. His willingness to raise, sometimes obliquely, questions about the Torah's authorship later made him a touchstone for Spinoza's own textual criticism in the Theologico-Political Treatise. He also worked as a translator and astrologer, carrying Andalusian Jewish scholarship north into Christian Europe.