Judah ben David Hayyuj
Judah ben David Hayyuj (Hebrew: יְהוּדָה בֶּן דָּוִד חַיּוּג׳, romanized: Yəhuḏā ben Dawiḏ Ḥayyuj, Arabic: أبو زكريا يحيى بن داؤد حيوج, romanized: Abū Zakariyya Yahyá ibn Dawūd Ḥayyūj) was a Maghrebi Jew of Al-Andalus born in North Africa. He was a linguist and is regarded as the father of Hebrew scientific grammar.
Judah was born in Fez, then part of the Fatimid Caliphate, about 945. At an early age, he went to Córdoba during the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, where he seems to have remained till his death about 1000. He was the first to propose that Hebrew words stem from triconsonantal roots.
Career[edit]
Hayyuj was a pupil of Menahem ben Saruq, whom he later helped to defend against the attacks of Dunash ben Labrat and his followers. Later in life, Hayyuj developed his theories about Hebrew grammar and was obliged to step forward as an opponent of the grammatical theories of his teacher. His thorough knowledge of Arabic grammatical literature led him to apply the theories elaborated by Arabic grammarians to Hebrew grammar and thus become the founder of the scientific study of that discipline.
Preceding scholars had found the greatest difficulty in accounting, by the laws of Hebrew morphology, for the divergences existing between the so-called "strong" and "weak" verbs. Much ingenuity was spent discovering the principles that controlled the conjugation of the verbs. The weakness of Menahem's assertion that there are stems in Hebrew containing three letters, two letters, and one letter, respectively, was pointed out by Dunash; but, although the latter was on the road to a solution of the problem, it was left to Ḥayyuj to find the key.
Hayyuj exerted an immense influence on succeeding generations. All later Hebrew grammarians up to the present day base their works on his; and the technical terms still employed in current Hebrew grammars are most of them simply translations of the Arabic terms employed by Hayyuj. His first three works were translated into Hebrew twice, first by Moses ibn Gikatilla and later by Abraham ibn Ezra. The following modern editions of his works have appeared:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the : Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Hayyuj, Judah b. David". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
