Episode 16 – Jewish Scholar in Cairo: Moses Mamonides

Islamic Golden Age (2017)

By Eamon Gearon

Film Review

Moses Mamonides was an important 12th century Jewish philosopher during the Golden Age of Islam, who lived first in Andalusia and later in North in Cairo.

The Muslims first invaded the Iberian peninsula in 711, defeating the Visigoth kings who controlled it.

By the 12th century, Muslim control over Iberia was pretty weak. By 1031 Christians controlled the northern half of the peninsula and the southern half had broken up into multiple small Muslim emirates.

At its zenith, the capital Cordoba had a population of 500,000, thanks to a thriving trade network, with Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists all enjoyed protected status.

In 1148, the Amohads (Moroccan Berbers who had conquered much of North Africa – see The Lost Kingdoms of Africa: The Berber Kingdom of Morocco) took control of Andalusia and moved the capitol from Cordoba to Seville. Due their strict interpretation of Islamic law, Jews, Christians and many Muslims who refused to covert were subject to arrest.

Forced to flee into exile at 13, Mamonides came of age speaking Arabic in North Africa. Although publicly his family converted to Islam, they privately practiced Judaism. Following his marriage he moved to Cairo with his wife and two sons.

In 1171, the Fatamid caliphate was conquered by Saladin (see Cairo’s House of Wisdom and Al-Haytham’s Book of Optics). Jews (numbering 7,000 in Cairo during the 12th century) enjoyed protected status under his rule. Mamonedes, who was was a physician, was appointed as Saladin’s physician and began engaging directly with Muslim scholars. He went through 300,000 documents (stored in a Cairo genizah*) covering 1,000 years of Jewish history.

Two of the books he published were Commentary on the Mishrah (the oral tradition of Jewish law) in 1168 AD and Mishrah Torah 1170-1180 AD. The latter was a compilation of of many Jewish legal traditions from the diaspora. The only work Mamonedes published in Hebrew (the others were in Arabic) was Guide for the Perplexed, which attempted to reconcile Aristotle’s rationalism with the the divine revelation contained in the Torah.

*In the Jewish faith, discarded religious documents containing the name of God must be stored in a genizah before they can be destroyed.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5756987/5757019