A star hath arisen on the horizon of France and shineth afar. Peaceful it came, with all its cortege, from Sinai and Zion. .... The blind he enlightens, the thirsty delights with his honey-comb, He whom men call Parshandata, the Torah's clear interpreter. All doubts he solves, whose books are Israel's joy, Who pierceth stout walls, and layeth bare the law's mysterious sense. For him the crown is destined, to him belongeth royal homage. When one sees with what severity and injustice Abraham Ibn Ezra treats the French commentator, one may well doubt whether this enthusiastic eulogy sprang from his pen, capricious though we know him to have been. "The Talmud," he said, "has declared that the Peshat must never lose its rights. But following generations gave the first place to Derash, as Rashi did, who pursued this method in commenting upon the entire Bible, though he believed he was using Peshat. In his works there is not one rational explanation out of a thousand." As I have said, Rashi and Ibn Ezra were not fashioned to understand each other.[145] The commentaries of David Kimhi[146] contain no such sharp criticisms. By birth Kimhi was a Provencal, by literary tradition a Spaniard. He often turned Rashi's Biblical commentaries to good account for himself. Sometimes he did not mention Rashi by name, sometimes he referred to him openly. A pompous eulogy of Rashi was written by Moses ben Nahman, or Nahmanides,[147] in the introduction to his commentary on the Pentateuch; and the body of the work shows that he constantly drew his inspiration from Rashi and ever had Rashi before his eyes. At the same time he also opposes Rashi, either because the free ways of the French rabbi shocked him, or because the Frenchman's naive rationalism gave offense to his mysticism. In fact, it is known that Nahmanides is one of the first representatives of Kabbalistic exegesis, and his example contributed not a little toward bringing it into credit. Even the author of the Zohar - that Bible of the Kabbalah, which under cover of false authority exercised so lasting an influence upon Judaism - whether or not he was Moses of Leon (about 1250-1305) used for his exegesis the commentary of Rashi, without, of course, mentioning it by name, and sometimes he even reproduced it word for word. The Kabbalist exegete Bahya or Behaia ben Asher, of Saragossa, in his commentary on the Pentateuch (1291) cites Rashi as one of the principal representatives of Peshat - behold how far we have gotten from Ibn Ezra, and how Rashi is cleared of unjust contempt.