Joseph Gikatilla

Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, also written Chiquitilla, was a Castilian kabbalist born in 1248 in Medinaceli who died sometime after 1305 in Penafiel. Initially strongly influenced by Abraham Abulafia's ecstatic, prophetic system of kabbalism, he came to show a greater affinity for philosophy and made an original attempt to give a detailed yet lucid and systematic exposition of kabbalistic thought; he originated the doctrine equating the infinite, Ein Sof, with the first of the ten Sefirot, a conception later rejected by most kabbalists from the sixteenth century onward even as his works continued to be highly esteemed and published in many editions. His writings reflect the intellectual currents that converged in Castile in the late thirteenth century, and his major work, Sha'arei Orah, Gates of Light, written before 1293, had a lasting influence on the later development of both Jewish and Christian mysticism.