Abraham ibn Ḥasdai ha-Levi

A Hebrew poet and translator in Barcelona, an ally of Maimonides' defenders in the great controversy over philosophy — and the man who rendered into Hebrew, from Arabic, a moral romance about a prince who leaves his father's palace after learning of sickness, old age and death.

The accidental crossing, in person. He put the Buddha's life on Jewish shelves in the cradle of the Kabbalah and never knew whose life it was.