Editing Hasdai ibn Shaprut (section)

==Jewish activity==
Hasdai was very active on behalf of his co-religionists and Jewish science. Allegedly, when he heard that there was a Jewish state with a Jewish ruler in Central Asia, he desired to enter into correspondence with this monarch. When the report of the existence of the [[Khazar]] state was confirmed by two Jews, Mar Saul and Mar Joseph, who had come in the retinue of an embassy from the [[Croatia]]n king to Córdoba, Hasdai entrusted to them a letter, written in good Hebrew addressed to the Jewish king, in which he gave an account of his position in the Western state, described the geographical situation of Andalusia and its relation to foreign countries, and asked for detailed information regarding the Khazars, their origin, their political and military organization, etc. Historian [[Shaul Stampfer]] has questioned the authenticity of the letter said to have been received from the Khazar king, citing numerous linguistic and geographic oddities amid a flourishing of pseudo-historiographic texts and forgeries in medieval Spain.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stampfer |first1=Shaul |title=Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism? |journal=Jewish Social Studies |date=2013 |volume=19 |issue=3 |pages=1–72 |doi=10.2979/jewisocistud.19.3.1 |publisher=Indiana University Press|jstor=10.2979/jewisocistud.19.3.1 |s2cid=161320785 }}</ref>

Hasdai sent a letter to Empress [[Helena Lekapene|Helena of Byzantium]] in which he pleaded for religious liberty for the [[History of the Jews in the Byzantine Empire|Jews of Byzantium]]. He pointed to his own warm relations with the Muslim Caliph in Córdoba as well as his benevolent attitude towards the Christians of Spain.<ref>{{cite web |title=History in Fragments: A Genizah Centenary Exhibition (T-S J2.71) |url=http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/exhibition.html |publisher=University of Cambridge|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131103230223/http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/exhibition.html |archive-date=2013-11-03 }}</ref>

Hasdai sent rich presents to the [[talmudic academies in Babylonia]] and corresponded with Dosa, the son of [[Saadia Gaon]]. He was also instrumental in transferring the center of Jewish theological studies from [[Lower Mesopotamia]] to the Iberian Peninsula. [[Moses ben Hanoch]], from [[Sura Academy]], had been captured by pirates off of Italy, [[pidyon shvuyim|ransomed by Iberian Jews]], and was brought to Córdoba. Hasdai appointed him director of a school, thereby detaching Judaism from its dependence on the Jews of the [[Abbasid Caliphate]], to the great joy of the caliph, as [[Abraham ibn Daud]] said in ''Sefer ha-Kabbalah'' p.&nbsp;68. [[Ibn Abi Usaybi'a]] wrote about him in his biographical encyclopedia, "Hasdai b. Isaac was among the foremost Jewish scholars versed in their law. He opened to his co-religionists in Andalusia the gates of knowledge of the religious law, of chronology, etc. Before his time they had to apply to the Jews of [[Baghdad]] on legal questions, and on matters referring to the calendar and the dates of the festivals" (ed. Müller, ii. 50).

Hasdai marks the beginning of the florescence of Andalusi Jewish culture and the rise of poetry and the study of [[Hebrew grammar]].<ref>Roth p. 421</ref> Himself a scholar, he encouraged scholarship among his coreligionists by the purchase of Hebrew books, which he imported from the East, and by supporting Jewish scholars whom he gathered about him. Among the latter was [[Menahem ben Saruq]] of [[Tortosa]], the protégé of Hasdai's father, as well as [[Dunash ben Labrat]], both of whom addressed poems to their patron. Dunash, however, prejudiced Hasdai to such a degree against Menahem that Hasdai caused Menahem to be maltreated.<ref>Menahem ben Saruq, Maḥberet Menaḥem (Manual of Menahem), Jerusalem 1968, supplement: Biography of the Author, the First Hebrew Lexicographer, The Celebrated Rabbi Menahem Ben Saruk (pub. in London 1854, ed. Filipowski, p. 16).</ref>