  By this time, Halevi was at the height of his career in Spain. He had by then married and had a daughter, who would be married to Isaac ibn Ezra, the son of his friend Abraham. His secular and religious poetry made him a celebrated figure throughout Spain and beyond. He had also written the first drafts of what he called the “Khazari book,” which was undertaken in response to questions raised by an unnamed heretical thinker, possibly a Karaite. It would eventually be reworked to become his most famous religio-philosophical work, the Kuzari or Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion.  However, he had gradually become convinced that a secure Jewish life in Spain was no longer viable and certainly not for him. His religious poetry increasingly attested to an intense longing for communion with God and also for a return to Zion. As the Christian policy of reconquering territories lost to the Muslims proceeded apace, and in the wake of the First Crusade, messianic expectations grew. He even records in one of his poems a prophetic dream that forecast the downfall of the oppressive Islamic regimes in the year 1130.