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Maimonides, in Hebrew Moshe ben Maimon and known by the acronym Rambam, and in Arabic as Musa ibn Maymun, was the foremost Jewish thinker of the medieval age, a philosopher, jurist and physician whose authority remains central to Judaism. Born in Cordoba in 1138 and dying in Egypt in 1204, he fled persecution in Spain and North Africa and settled near Cairo, where he served as physician to the vizier of Saladin and as head of the Jewish community. His Mishneh Torah is a comprehensive code that reorganized the whole of Jewish law in lucid Hebrew, and his Guide of the Perplexed, written in Judeo-Arabic, sought to reconcile the Bible with Aristotelian philosophy and profoundly influenced Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought alike. His formulation of the Thirteen Principles of Faith entered the liturgy, and a proverb honours him as the second Moses: from Moses to Moses there arose none like Moses. He is remembered as the pre-eminent codifier and philosopher of rabbinic Judaism.
Facts
Life
Lifespan or Floruit Office HeldHe served as physician to the vizier of Saladin and as head of the Jewish community near Cairo. 2 Place of ActivityCourt physician and head of the Jewish community there 1 Place of ActivityFez, then Fustat in Egypt 1 Manner of DeathDied at Fustat in 1204; by tradition buried at Tiberias Status
Status Within the TraditionHis Thirteen Principles of Faith, articulated in his commentary on the Mishnah, became one of the most influential attempts in Jewish history to state Judaism's core beliefs as a fixed creed, though the very attempt to reduce Judaism to a formal creed remained, and remains, contested within the tradition. 2 Publications
Notable PublicationThe Mishneh Torah, completed around 1180, is a fourteen volume code written in clear rabbinic Hebrew that reorganizes the whole of Jewish law by subject rather than by the order of the Talmud, composed with the stated aim that a person would need no other book to know the law. 3 Origins
Place of Origin Position Profile
Key TextThe Guide of the Perplexed, written in Judeo-Arabic around 1190, addresses readers troubled by apparent conflicts between philosophy and the literal sense of scripture, seeking to reconcile Aristotelian reason with the Torah through a method that reads biblical anthropomorphism as metaphor. 2 Learn More
The Guide of the Perplexed
Moses Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, "Rambam," 1138-1204) is the towering figure of medieval Jewish thought, and his philosophical masterwork, the Guide of the Perplexed (written in Judeo-Arabic), is one of the most influential works of religious philosophy ever composed. It addresses the reader torn between the teachings of the Torah and the conclusions of Aristotelian philosophy, and seeks to show that, rightly understood, they do not conflict.
Central to it is a rigorous negative theology: God is absolutely one and incorporeal, so utterly beyond human categories that we can say what God is not but never positively what God is, and the anthropomorphic language of scripture ("the hand of God," God's "anger") must be read as metaphor. The Guide also offers rational accounts of prophecy, of providence, and of the reasons for the commandments (ta'amei ha-mitzvot). Maimonides wrote it esoterically, in deliberate "chapter headings" and scattered hints, so that its deepest teaching would reach the philosophically prepared while not disturbing the simple believer, a method that has kept interpreters arguing about his true views ever since.
The Codifier, the Physician, and the Thirteen Principles
Maimonides was not only a philosopher but the supreme legal codifier of Judaism. His Mishneh Torah ("Repetition of the Torah") is a monumental, systematically arranged code of the entire body of Jewish law, written in clear Hebrew and organised by subject so that, as he boldly put it, a person could know the whole law from the Torah and his book alone, an ambition that provoked criticism as much as admiration.
In his commentary on the Mishnah he formulated the Thirteen Principles of Faith, the nearest thing Judaism has to a creed, later versified in the hymn Yigdal still sung in synagogues. He earned his living as a physician, ultimately serving the Ayyubid court in Egypt, and wrote medical treatises drawn on for centuries. His towering authority is caught in the traditional saying, "from Moses to Moses there arose none like Moses." Yet he was also intensely controversial: his rationalism, his allegorical reading of scripture, and his views on resurrection ignited the bitter Maimonidean controversy that divided Jewish communities for generations after his death.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Maimonides was born in Cordoba, his family leaving during the Almohad persecutions.
Worked within and critically extended Maimonides' Aristotelian rationalism, departing from him on divine knowledge of particulars and the eternity of matter.
Wrote Or Hashem as a sustained philosophical critique of the Aristotelian rationalism Maimonides had brought into Jewish thought two centuries earlier.
This source names Maimonides directly: "at Northwestern University, wrote this Maimonides entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published in 2006 and last revised in 2024."
This source names Maimonides directly: "A Wikipedia article on Maimonides, the twelfth century Sephardic rabbi, physician and philosopher whose Mishneh Torah and Guide for the Perplexed shaped Jewish law and thought."
This source names Maimonides directly: "Moshe Halbertal's Maimonides: Life and Thought, published by Princeton University Press in 2014, is a modern scholarly intellectual biography of Moses Maimonides, tracing his legal, philosophical..."
This source names Maimonides directly: "The Mishneh Torah is Maimonides's own twelfth-century primary legal code, composed over a period of years with no single publication date this record can honestly assign, a gap it states rather than..."
Maimonides, born in Cordoba in 1138, is the greatest figure of Sephardic Judaism; his code and philosophy shaped all later Jewish thought.
The ban targeted Maimonides' writings decades after his own death, not the man himself.
This source names Maimonides directly: "questioning the doctrinal status of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Jewish faith, examining how variously they were actually received, debated and in places rejected across later rabbinic history..."
Belongs to Tradition
Depicted In
The engraving's claimed and, per both agreeing records, universally adopted subject since circa 1744, though peer-reviewed appraisal finds the likeness itself invented rather than authentic; the corroborating Wikipedia record independently uses the same image as its own portrait of him.
Related To
Maimonides set out the requirements of a complete repentance in the Laws of Repentance in the Mishneh Torah.
Traditions Founded
Works Attributed
Set out by Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah.
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Macmillan Reference USA, 2007s.v. MaimonidesView the Source 2. Maimonides: Life and Thought
Moshe Halbertal, Princeton University Press, 2014On Maimonides' life and thoughtView the Source 2. Maimonides: Life and Thought
Moshe Halbertal, Princeton University Press, 2014Life and thought of Moses MaimonidesView the Source 3. Mishneh Torah
Moses MaimonidesThe Mishneh Torah, Maimonides' code of Jewish lawView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza
Maimonides (Wikipedia)
WikipediaDepicted In: Posthumous Engraved Portrait of Maimonides (Thesaurus Antiquitatum Sacrarum, circa 1744)Quote, Depicted In: Posthumous Engraved Portrait of Maimonides (Thesaurus Antiquitatum Sacrarum, circa 1744)
Posthumous engraving in Thesaurus Antiquitatum Sacrarum, from which all modern portraits of Maimonides are derived, circa 1744.
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