Maimonides 1138 – 1204

Moses ben Maimon, known to the Latin West as Maimonides and to Jewish tradition by the acronym Rambam, was a medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher, physician, and Torah scholar of the 12th century. Born in Cordoba in al-Andalus and ultimately settling in Egypt, he served as personal physician to the court of Saladin while producing the most ambitious systematic works in medieval Jewish thought. His Mishneh Torah codified Jewish law in fourteen books, and his Guide for the Perplexed sought to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Jewish revelation, influencing not only later Jewish thought but Islamic and Christian scholasticism, particularly through Thomas Aquinas. His Thirteen Principles of Faith remain a defining statement of Jewish theological belief. He is widely regarded as the greatest philosopher of medieval Jewish tradition.

Moses Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon, 1138–1204) was the most influential Jewish philosopher of the medieval period and one of the most important interpreters of Aristotle in any tradition. Born in Córdoba in al-Andalus, his family was forced to flee the Almohad persecution of Jews and Christians in 1148 and eventually settled in Fustat (old Cairo), where Maimonides served as physician to the household of Saladin and as the leader of the Egyptian Jewish community.

Maimonides's two great works are the Mishneh Torah (1180), a fourteen-book systematic codification of Jewish law in Hebrew, and the Guide of the Perplexed (c. 1190), a philosophical work in Judeo-Arabic addressed to readers caught between rabbinic Judaism and Aristotelian philosophy. The Guide develops a sustained negative theology, an Aristotelian psychology and cosmology, and a philosophical reading of biblical narrative as the encoded teaching of philosophical doctrines to non-philosophical audiences.

Maimonides's influence on Aquinas is direct and substantial; the Summa Theologica engages the Guide repeatedly. Within the Jewish tradition, Maimonides has remained the most consequential single philosophical voice, with the Mishneh Torah continuing to shape rabbinic legal practice and the Guide continuing to organize Jewish philosophical reflection. He died in Fustat in 1204 and was buried in Tiberias.