  Complementing a vast corpus of Hebrew poetry (see section 7 below), Ibn Gabirol's most expansive work is his philosophical treatise, the Fons Vitae (The Fountain of Life, or yanbû‘ al-hayâh in  Arabic,[5] and the meqôr hayyîm in its later Hebrew  translation).[6] Originally written in Arabic in the 11th century in the form of a dialogue between a teacher and his student, the Fons Vitae was translated into Latin in the 12th century by the translation team of Dominicus Gundissalinus and John of Spain (Johannes  Hispanus),[7] and made into an abridged Hebrew version (one which loses the dialogue format and is something more of a summary of the original) by Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera in the 13th century. The original Arabic text is lost to us, though we do have some extant fragments in the form of citations of the original Arabic version in the Arabic language texts of other Jewish medieval  philosophers.[8] Because the Arabic fragments are sparse, the main version of the text is the Latin 12th century translation—it is considered more true to the original than the later 13th century Hebrew translation both because it is an earlier translation, but also because unlike the Hebrew summary translation, the Latin edition is (ostensibly) a complete translation, maintaining—as the Hebrew summary does not—the original dialogue format of Ibn Gabirol's original text. That said, it is worth noting that sometimes the 13th century Hebrew translation is more helpful than the Latin because it is able to resonate with various Hebrew terms at play in Ibn Gabirol's own vast corpus of Hebrew poetry which is often helpful in shedding light on some given philosophical point in the Fons Vitae.