  This prose exposition is replete with imagery but devoid, like similar accounts in Ibn Ezra’s writings, of any thorough discussion of the soul’s structure, origins, and path to liberation, of the kind that one does find in the Islamic neoplatonic tradition, including Jewish works such as pseudo-Bahya. It is really a reworking in rhymed prose—the medium of Ibn Gabirol’s liturgical masterpiece, Keter Malkhut—of the same themes that inspire Ibn Ezra’s poems. Nonetheless, Ibn Ezra undoubtedly impresses his readers with the great pathos and obvious sincerity of his liturgies. His hymn, “Tzom’ah nafshi” (“My soul thirsts”) is one of the most powerful expressions of longing for the divine in Hebrew letters. Ibn Ezra experienced deeply and fully the soul’s alienation in this world and her longing for divine redemption, and his poetic expressions of these awesome feelings served better as credentials for his expertise in matters of his soul than could any academic diploma.