Overview
Moses ibn Ezra’s Book of Conversation and Discussion is a Judeo-Arabic study of Hebrew poetry, language, literary history, and artistic technique. Structured as responses to questions, it explains how Andalusian Hebrew writers employed Arabic meters, rhetorical devices, genres, and standards of evaluation. Moses also reflected upon exile and the changing cultural conditions that threatened the poetic world he knew. The treatise is valuable not only for preserving information about individual writers but also for showing how medieval Sephardic intellectuals theorized literary excellence. It remains a landmark work of Hebrew criticism and cultural memory.
