  Although we are not certain of what traditions most influenced his work, we might certainly see in the pages of his philosophy and poetry a unique blend of Jewish, Islamic, Neoplatonic, Pythagorean, philosophical, Biblical, and mystical (Jewish and Islamic) source materials. We find overt use of Biblical quotes throughout his poetry, though (and this is something for which other Jewish thinkers criticized him) no overt references to the Bible or Jewish tradition in his Fons Vitae (though the title arguably references Psalms 36:10). In his notion of a Divine Word (in the Fons Vitae), we might hear resonances of the Longer Theology of Aristotle; in his interest in a Divine Throne (in the Fons Vitae and in his Keter Malkhût [Kingdom's Crown] poem), we might hear resonances of Muslim and Jewish “Throne  theologies”;[10] in his reference to God creating out of letters, we might hear resonances of the Sêfer Yezîrah (The Book of Formation, possibly known to Ibn Gabirol through the commentary edition of Saadya Gaon; for discussion of Sêfer Yezîrah and Ibn Gabirol, see Schlanger 1965 and Liebes 1987); in his causal metaphysical hierarchy we might discern the influence of the Liber  de Causis;[11] and in his emphasis on a principle called “al-‘unsur al-awwal” in his Arabic writing (generally translated as first matter) and called “yesôd” (foundation) in his Hebrew poetry, we might hear resonances of a tradition which scholars have dubbed “Pseudo Empedoclean”—an  imprecisely understood tradition of ideas found in an eclectic array of medieval Jewish and Islamic texts (where authors sometimes refer overtly to Empedocles by name) in which there emerges a notable focus on a principle of pure supernal matter (al-‘unsur al-awwal, literally “the first element”) at the core of being which is itself either coupled with a principle of first form or described as itself composite of the duality of “love and strife.” The exact nature of this tradition or traditions remains unclear, but can be found in al-Shahrastani, al-Shahrazuri, Ps. Ammonius, and al-Amiri (for references, see the entry on “anbaduklîs”—the  Arabic transliteration of “Empedocles”—in  Encyclopedia of Islam), in some medieval Hebrew Kabbalistic  traditions,[12] and has been linked to ideas in Ibn Masarra (see Asín-Palacios 1978), Isaac Israeli and Ibn Hasday (See Stern 1983a). Linking Ibn Gabirol to this tradition seems warranted not only in light of his own emphasis on al-‘unsur al-awwal (followed in turn by an unusual focus on the role of matter/s in the cosmos), but in light of a claim by his 13th century translator Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera who in the introduction to his Hebrew edition of Meqôr Hayyîm (Fons Vitae) writes that Ibn Gabirol seems to have been influenced by “Empedocles' Book of the Five Substances” (cf. Falaquera in Fons Vitae 1962, p. 435). Leaving aside what this might refer to (scholars debate both the title as well as what it refers to), it does seem that Ibn Falaquera was right to note some link between Ibn Gabirol's Fons Vitae and some set of ideas circulating under the name of  Empedocles.[13]