biography
| name: |
Maimonides, Moses
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| |
originally Moses ben Maimon
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pronunciation:
[miymonideez]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1135/8–1204)
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| biography:
| Spanish-Hebrew writer on law and philosophy, born in Córdoba, S Spain. His family left Spain for Fez in 1160 because of religious persecution under the Almohad dynasty. After living for a while in Acre, Jerusalem, and Hebron, he settled in Alexandria as Chief Rabbi and physician to the Sultan. The son of a good scholar, from whom he learned mathematics and astronomy, he wrote an Arabic commentary on the Mishnah (1168), following it with the finest of all mediaeval expositions of Jewish law, the Mishnah Torah (1180). His best-known work is his interpretation of Jewish religion in terms of Aristotelian philosophy Dalalat al-ha'irin (Arabic: Guide for the Perplexed), translated into Hebrew in 1190 as Morah nevukhim. The book had a deep and lasting influence on Spinoza and many other Jews, but also contributed to the compendia of Thomas Aquinas and other mediaeval writers (such as Alfonso de la Torre) who knew it either in an anonymous 13th-c Latin version or in Pedro de Toledo's 15th-c Castilian translation. Hebrew literature in the two centuries following the publication of the Hebrew edition of the Dalalat is full of praise as well as denunciation of the book. |
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