Maimonides

Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides and by the acronym Rambam, was born in Córdoba, in al-Andalus, in 1138. When the Almohads conquered the city in 1148 and forced Jews and Christians to convert or leave, his family wandered for years in Spain and North Africa, living in Fez, before settling in Egypt around 1166, in Fusṭāṭ, beside Cairo.

There he became the leader of the Jewish community and a physician at the court of Saladin’s vizier. His Commentary on the Mishnah included the thirteen principles of faith that many Jews still recite; his Mishneh Torah, completed around 1180, codified the whole of Jewish law in clear Hebrew. His Guide of the Perplexed, written in Arabic in Hebrew letters around 1190, was addressed to a student troubled by the conflict between the Torah and philosophy. He died in 1204.

The Guide provoked fierce controversy, and copies were burned in France in the 1230s; but it became the classic of Jewish philosophy, and in Latin translation was studied by Thomas Aquinas. A saying, “from Moses to Moses there was none like Moses”, expresses his standing.