Ibn Gabirol Solomon, in Latin, Avicebron (c.1020–c.1057), Spanish Jewish philosopher and poet, the author (in Arabic) of The Source of Life, a classic of Neoplatonic thought. This work was written without any explicit Jewish associations, and was preserved only in a twelfth-century Latin translation, the Fons vitae. Consequently, its author was assumed until the last century to be Muslim or Christian. Jewish Neoplatonists and mystics until the Renaissance were familiar with the work and its author, and its influence was felt in Christian Scholastic circles as well. Ibn Gabirol’s philosophy is also reflected in his epic Hebrew poem ‘The Royal Crown,’ which merges the personal and religious feelings of the poet with a verse summary of his metaphysical and astronomical beliefs. The Fons vitae is a prolix and often inconsistent treatise, but exhibits radical creativity. The influence of Proclus and of the first Jewish Neoplatonist, the tenth-century Isaac Israeli, is also evident. Ibn Gabirol superimposes on the traditional Neoplatonic triad of universal substances, the Intellect, Soul, and Nature, another set of creative and more fundamental hypostases, the One, Divine Will, and Form and Matter. In one of his most radical formulations, this primordial Form and Matter are thought to suffuse not only the entire world that proceeds from them, but to be found within the One itself, Matter being identified with the divine essence, Form with Divine Will. Matter here emerges as prior and more essential to the divine being than Form; God by implication is identified primarily with potentiality and becoming, a point not lost upon the mystics. See also JEWISH PHILOSOPH. A.L.I.