sentences: "This is especially true of Abraham ben David of Posquières and his circle in the 13th century, whose relation to the beginnings of the Kabala can hardly be denied.Further, the currents of thought which, emanating from India, created Sufism in Persian and Mohammedan circles in the 12th and 13th centuries, exerted considerable influence upon Jewish thinkers, as may be learned from BaḦya, whose ethical system, "Ḥobot ha-Lebabot," oscillates between asceticism and Jewish optimism, with a decided leaning to the former (see below).