Arriving in Córdoba as a young man in 1088 to learn medicine, Yehuda Halevi is enchanted by a world in which Muslim, Jewish and Christian courtiers share poetry and philosophy in their elegant gardens. Here he falls in love with Deborah, the spirited daughter of his host. In this turbulent world, however, Yehuda also encounters invasions and pirates, book burnings and bandits.

Driven by conflict to move from city to city, Yehuda and Deborah are often parted – but always in the hope that they will one day return together to Córdoba. As Yehuda’s fame grows as a poet and as a philosopher, his writings become increasingly mystical but also increasingly restless, for he yearns to travel to the holy city of Jerusalem. In 1140, as an old man, he must finally decide whether to stay with his family or begin the perilous voyage towards Egypt and Crusader Jerusalem….

  Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141) is still famous as a poet and a philosopher, who flourished in Muslim and Christian Spain. His first language was Arabic, but he wrote his poetry in Hebrew: as young man he wrote beautiful, sensuous poetry, but he also wrote inspiring religious poems – an Andalućian John Donne, no less! Yehuda was also a skilled physician who was physician to the wise and learned Emir of Granada and later to King Alfonso VI of Léon-Castile.