Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid

The first major poet of the Hebrew literary renaissance of Moslem Spain, Shmuel Ben Yosef Ha-Levi HaNagid (993-1056 C.E.) was also the Prime Minister of the Muslim state of Granada, battlefield commander of the non-Jewish Granadan army, and one of the leading religious figures in a medieval Jewish world that stretched from Andalusia to Baghdad. These versions of HaNagid's poems capture the poet's combination of secular and religious passion, as well as his linking of Hebrew and Arabic poetic practice.