Judah Ibn Tibbon (about 1120-1190) was of Spanish origin, but he emigrated from Granada to Provence during the same persecution that drove Maimonides from his native land.  Judah settled in Lunel, and his skill as a physician won him such renown that his medical services were sought by knights and bishops even from across the sea.  Judah Ibn Tibbon was a student of science and philosophy.  He early qualified himself as a translator by careful attention to philological niceties.  Under the inspiration of Meshullam, he spent the years 1161 to 1186 in making a series of translations from Arabic into Hebrew.  His translations were difficult and forced in style, but he had no ready-made language at his command.  He had to create a new Hebrew.  Classical Hebrew was naturally destitute of the technical terms of philosophy, and Ibn Tibbon invented expressions modelled on the Greek and the Arabic.  He made Hebrew once more a living language by extending its vocabulary and adapting its idioms to the requirements of medieval culture.

His son Samuel (1160-1230) and his grandson Moses continued the line of faithful but inelegant translators.  Judah had turned into Hebrew the works of Bachya, Ibn Gebirol, Jehuda Halevi, Ibn Janach, and Saadiah.  Samuel was the translator of Maimonides, and bore a brave part in the defence of his master in the bitter controversies which arose as to the lawfulness and profit of studying philosophy.  The translations of the Tibbon family were in the first instance intended for Jewish readers only, but later on the Tibbonite versions were turned into Latin by Buxtorf and others.  Another Latin translation of Maimonides existed as early as the thirteenth century.

Of the successors of the Tibbons, Jacob Anatoli (1238) was the first to translate any portion of Averroes into any language.  Averroes was an Arab thinker of supreme importance in the Middle Ages, for through his writings Europe was acquainted with Aristotle.  Renan asserts that all the early students of Averroes were Jews.  Anatoli, a son-in-law of Samuel Ibn Tibbon, was invited by Emperor Frederick II to leave Provence and settle in Naples.  To allow Anatoli full leisure for making translations, Frederick granted him an annual income.  Anatoli was a friend of the Christian Michael Scot, and the latter made Latin renderings from the former’s Hebrew translations.  In this way Christian Europe was made familiar with Aristotle as interpreted by Averroes (Ibn Roshd).  Much later, the Jew Abraham de Balmes (1523) translated Averroes directly from Arabic into Latin.  In the early part of the fourteenth century, Kalonymos, the son of Kalonymos, of Aries (born 1287), translated various works into Latin.