Birth in Córdoba
Moses ben Maimon was born into a family of rabbinic judges in Córdoba, then under Almoravid rule.
Medieval Jewish philosophy · Aristotelianism · 1138–1204
Maimonides
Understand the Law without betraying reason.
Córdoba · Fez · Fustat
Biography
The thread of a life.
Moses Maimonides, born in Córdoba and active as a physician and communal leader in Fustat, was both the foremost codifier of Jewish law and a philosopher formed by the Aristotelian tradition of the Islamic world. Through his Commentary on the Mishnah, his Hebrew code and his Arabic Guide of the Perplexed, he sought to show that the Law, rightly interpreted, can be lived together with demonstrative knowledge of God and nature.
Almohad conquest and exile
After the Almohads took Córdoba, the family left and wandered through al-Andalus before settling in Fez.
Egypt and the Commentary
After a journey through the land of Israel, the family settled in Egypt, where he completed his Commentary on the Mishnah.
Epistle and code
The Epistle to Yemen counselled a threatened community, and the Mishneh Torah gave the whole Law a systematic Hebrew form.
Court physician and the Guide
Serving as a physician in the circle of Saladin’s vizier, he completed the Guide of the Perplexed and defended resurrection in a separate treatise.
Death in Fustat
He died in Fustat; according to tradition he was buried in Tiberias, as his Guide began circulating in Hebrew translation.
Understanding a life in depth
01Córdoba, persecution and wandering
Moses ben Maimon was born in Córdoba in 1138 (some sources give 1135) into a family of rabbinic scholars; his father Maimon was a judge. After the Almohad conquest of 1148, Jews and Christians were pressed to convert or leave, and the family wandered through al-Andalus before settling in Fez around 1160. Whether they outwardly conformed to Islam there remains debated. His education joined Talmud and rabbinic law with the Arabic sciences of the age: logic, astronomy, medicine and the philosophy of al-Farabi, Avicenna and Ibn Bajja.
02Egypt: commentary, community and medicine
In 1165 the family sailed to Acre, visited Jerusalem and Hebron, and soon settled in Egypt, first in Alexandria and then in Fustat. There Maimonides completed in 1168 his Arabic Commentary on the Mishnah, whose introductions include the Eight Chapters and the thirteen principles of faith. His Epistle to Yemen of 1172 counselled a community facing forced conversion and a messianic claimant. When his brother David drowned on a trading voyage in the Indian Ocean, he turned to medicine for a living, later serving the circle of al-Qadi al-Fadil, the vizier of Saladin, and for periods leading the Jewish community of Egypt.
03A code for the whole Law
Around 1178 Maimonides completed the Mishneh Torah, a code that arranges the entire body of Jewish law in fourteen books written in lucid Mishnaic Hebrew. It includes laws that could not be practised in his time, such as those of the Temple and of kingship, because he regarded the Law as a single intelligible order. The opening Book of Knowledge sets out the existence and unity of God, the structure of the heavens, moral dispositions and the duty of study. By omitting sources and dissenting views he hoped to spare readers the maze of earlier literature; critics, notably Abraham ben David of Posquières, answered with sharp glosses, and the code became the starting point of later legal commentary.
04The Guide and its readers
Around 1190 Maimonides completed the Guide of the Perplexed in Judeo-Arabic, dedicated to his student Joseph ben Judah, to whom the chapters were sent as they were written. It addresses believers trained in philosophy who are troubled by the literal sense of Scripture. The work moves from a lexicon of biblical terms to divine attributes, creation, prophecy, providence and the reasons for the commandments, and warns that some contradictions are deliberate. He died in Fustat in 1204, shortly after Samuel ibn Tibbon finished the Hebrew translation. After 1230, controversy over his philosophical writings divided communities in Provence and northern France, while a Latin version reached Thomas Aquinas; readers from Spinoza to Leo Strauss still dispute how the Guide should be read.
His code remains a cornerstone of Jewish legal study, and the Guide shaped Jewish, Christian and later philosophical debate, from Thomas Aquinas, who cites “Rabbi Moses”, to Spinoza’s critique of scriptural interpretation. Scholars still disagree on whether the Guide hides an esoteric teaching or records an open inquiry.
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