The course will focus on a distinct and quite prevalent genre in medieval Hebrew secular poetry: Proverbs and aphorisms formulated as rhymed poems. We will discuss a collection of proverbs compiled and rhymed by the twelfth-century poet and biblical commentator Joseph Qimhi in Provence. We will trace the enormous impetus experienced by Hebrew proverbial literature through its contacts with its Arabic counterpart  and inquire into earlier proverb collections (Arabic and Hebrew) which may have been accessible to Qimhi.