Person · 5000–5051 AM · 1240 CE — 1291 CE
Rabbi Abraham Abulafia רבי אברהם בן שמואל אבולעפיה
founder of the prophetic Kabbalah—the science of combining letters
Born at Saragossa, raised at Tudela; his life was a wandering: Acre, Capua, Barcelona, Patras, Rome, Messina and Palermo, the island of Comino. The books come one after another: Sefer ha-Geulah in 1273, Sefer ha-Yashar in 1279, Hayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba in 1280, Sefer ha-Ot in 1285–88, Imrei Shefer in 1291.
In Sicily he declared himself a prophet, and the Rashba sent a sharp letter of denunciation to Palermo. After that the road of his teaching into the schools of Spain was closed—and opened the other way: the hokhmat ha-tzeruf lived on for centuries, to the kabbalists of Safed and beyond.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Sefer ha-Ot, 1285–88 — the prophetic Kabbalah in its own words
Scholarship
- The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) — the years, the dated books, the journey to Rome and the Rashba's letter
Basis: documents and evidence.