Most likely born in Baghdad, the Jewish philosopher Sa’d ibn Mansur Ibn Kammuna died in 1284; his writings, all of which were in Arabic, influenced both Jewish and Muslim thinkers of the era. His thought draws upon Sufism, the Islamic philosophers Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali, and the great Sephardi philosophers Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides, among many other sources. Describing one of Ibn Kammuna’s books, recently translated into English by Tzvi Langermann, Alan Brill writes:

Ibn Kammuna’s Subtle Insights Concerning Knowledge and Practice is a goldmine of ethics, ritual, piety, and religious thought, [filled with] valuable [information] about the medieval Jewish experience and its culture.

Written for the newly appointed Muslim governor of Isfahan, [a city now in Iran and then ruled by an offshoot of the Mongol empire], this compact treatise and philosophical guidebook includes a wide‑ranging and accessible set of essays on ethics, psychology, political philosophy, and the unity of God.

To Kammuna, [society is composed of] two elements: the common people who follow religion based on the authority of prophecy and the philosopher- intellectuals who have a philosophic religion. This book presents what Langermann calls “Abrahamic philosophic piety,” [based on the twin] principles of God and prophecy. Allah, Theos, and the God of the Hebrew Bible are automatically assumed to be the same universal Deity.

Yet, adds Langermann, in conversation with Brill, the abstract universalism Ibn Khammuna embraces in this book is not, at least on its own, representative of his thought as a whole:

[Ibn Khammuna’s book comparing the three monotheistic religions], Examination of the Three Faiths, has a distinctly pro-Jewish bias, which was not lost on Christian and Muslim readers. It is not overtly polemical; he does not attack any other religion. . . . However, Judaism does come out looking the best of the three in that book. Similarly, his relatively unknown treatise comparing Rabbinic Judaism with Karaism, [a sect that rejected the Talmud and the rabbinic tradition], clearly favors the Rabbinites.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.