Ezra Fleischer, Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Communities under its Influence.
The sentence begins on p. 44, and won't make sense without going back to the beginning of the paragraph.
I'll translate:
"We need to pause a moment to consider the epithet 'The Little' which Menaḥem uses in his [acrostic] signatures in these poems. This is the earliest appearance of this epithets in poetic signatures in Spain. As we know, it became very typical a bit later; Yosef ibn Abitur uses it dozens of times in his poems, and [p. 45] Solomon ibn Gabirol used it so much in his signatures that later generations called him 'Solomon the Little'. The earliest occurrence of the epithet in poetic signatures is in early tenth-century Italy, and the earliest poet to use it, as far as we know, is Amittai ben Shefatya, of Southern Italy. The fact that it appears in Menaḥem's signature seems to show that there is Italian influence on Spanish poetry at this time, and influence which we have already noted elsewhere regarding its traces in the work of Yosef ibn Abitur."
I just hope that "the Little" (Ha-qaṭan) doesn't mean "the impotent"....
no subject
The sentence begins on p. 44, and won't make sense without going back to the beginning of the paragraph.
I'll translate:
"We need to pause a moment to consider the epithet 'The Little' which Menaḥem uses in his [acrostic] signatures in these poems. This is the earliest appearance of this epithets in poetic signatures in Spain. As we know, it became very typical a bit later; Yosef ibn Abitur uses it dozens of times in his poems, and [p. 45] Solomon ibn Gabirol used it so much in his signatures that later generations called him 'Solomon the Little'. The earliest occurrence of the epithet in poetic signatures is in early tenth-century Italy, and the earliest poet to use it, as far as we know, is Amittai ben Shefatya, of Southern Italy. The fact that it appears in Menaḥem's signature seems to show that there is Italian influence on Spanish poetry at this time, and influence which we have already noted elsewhere regarding its traces in the work of Yosef ibn Abitur."
I just hope that "the Little" (Ha-qaṭan) doesn't mean "the impotent"....