Hasdai ibn Shaprut חסדאי אבן שפרוט
physician and minister to the caliph of Córdoba, patron of Jewish learning in Spain
Hasdai was physician to the caliph Abd al-Rahman III and effectively his minister: he ran the customs, negotiated with Byzantine and German embassies, and knew Arabic, Latin, Hebrew and the romance speech of Spain.
Jewish history remembers him for something else. He saw that Spain could stop depending on the Babylonian academies, and deliberately built a centre of learning at home. Tradition tells that when Rabbi Moshe ben Chanoch, a captive sold into slavery, reached Córdoba, Hasdai ransomed him and set him at the head of an academy — giving Spain its own source of halakhah. He supported poets and grammarians, among them Menachem ben Saruk, the first Hebrew lexicographer, and Dunash ben Labrat, who brought Arabic metres into Hebrew verse.
His most famous text is his letter to Joseph, king of the Khazars. Hearing that a Jewish kingdom existed somewhere in the east, he sent a letter across several countries to ask whether it was true. Joseph's reply is the Khazars' only testimony about themselves.