WEBVTT

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It’s an understood feature of human psychology
that people are influenced by the environment

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in which they grew up, but it’s a little
more rare for someone to embody the entire

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ethos of their hometown.

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So lets wind our clocks back to the Medieval
Islamic Golden Age and zoom into the southern

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Iberian Peninsula, and we’ll land in the
great city of Cordoba — quite possibly one

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of the best tickets to draw in the Historical
Lottery of Where To Be Born.

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Cordoba was the heart of a thriving medieval
civilization in what is now Spain but what

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was then known by its Arabic name Al-Andalus.

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Although it was ruled by Muslims for several
centuries, Al-Andalus was multiethnic and

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multifaith, being the longtime home to Christians
and, critically for our story today, several

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Jewish communities.

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And this is where we meet our protagonist:
a Jewish scholar from Cordoba who became the

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foremost legal authority on the Hebrew Bible,
an invaluable philosopher of the relationship

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between reason and spirituality, and, while
he was at it, the personal physician to one

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of the most powerful kings in medieval history.

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His Muslim peers knew him as Mūsā Bin Maymūn,
while fellow Jews called him by his Hebrew

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name Moshe Ben Maimon, and European Christians
used the Latin rendering of Moses Maimonides.

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Now, it is critical to disclose our personal
biases when doing historical analysis, so

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I must alert you to the fact that Maimonides
is kind of the coolest.

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SO, to see how this man of many names grew
up in a land of many cultures and became a

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man of many, many talents, Let’s Do Some
History.

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By the time of Maimonides’ birth in Cordoba
in 1135, Al-Andalus had quite a history behind

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it.

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The Umayyad Caliphate first conquered Iberia
from the Visigoths in the 710s, and in the

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decades after it became the independent Emirate
of Cordoba (756), and later the Caliphate

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of Cordoba in 929.

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At that point, Al-Andalus was a prosperous
trading hub with links to the Mediterranean

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Muslim world as well as the Merchant Republics
of Italy and even the actual Vikings up along

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the north Atlantic.

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Seeing as it was great business to be a relatively
open society, Al-Andalus attracted talent

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from its non-Muslim subjects and from travelers
all over the medieval world, so the state

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went out of its way to let these people actually
function in society.

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Cordoba was one of many Muslim states to implement
legal and religious protections for non-Muslims,

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known as Dhimmi.

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Religious toleration is of course nice for
its own sake, but enshrining those protections

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in Law made for a much more stable society
than, say, the European states where Jews

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or Muslims might sometimes be allowed to live,
but could easily be kicked out on a whim.

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It makes a ruckus and it’s bad for business.

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Though Cordoba was remarkable by the standards
of the day, it was hardly a utopia, as political

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authority was pretty handily concentrated
among the Arab ruling class, and all Dhimmi

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had to pay a special tax.

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That would still prove, quite literally, a
small price to pay, as this mosaic of Islam

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Christianity and Judaism produced a treasure-trove
of cross-cultural art and, critically, scholarship,

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stretching from the classical period to the
most groundbreaking modern writings.

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And this was the intellectual environment
in which Maimonides grew up, with one of the

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medieval world’s best libraries and universities
just a quick walk across town.

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But soon, the rest of the world would have
an opportunity to catch up, as the magnificent

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multiculture of Al-Andalus got quite thoroughly
smushed in 1148.

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See, when Maimonides was 10, the ruling Almoravid
dynasty disintegrated into several independent

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states (this is actually the second time that
happened but it’s fine), and 3 years later

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Cordoba was conquered by the Moroccan-based
Almohad dynasty.

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They differed slightly from their predecessors
in that they hated everything that Al-Andalus

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had previously stood for, abolishing Dhimmi
status and forcing non-Muslims to convert,

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leave, or die.

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So young Moshe Ben Maimon and his family were
a little stuck, and they seem to have chosen

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to fake a conversion publicly while continuing
to study and practice Judaism in private,

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where Maimonides continued learning from his
very well-educated father.

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Their next decade spent in and around Cordoba
was a tad bit tense, what with the looming

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threat of death and the acute possibility
that their neighbors knew them just well enough

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to see through the ruse, SO, in 1159 they
hopped across the Straits of Gibraltar to

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settle in the Moroccan city of Fès.

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The downside is they were right in the Almohad
heartland, but now they were anonymous, so

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their disguise of We Totally Converted For-Real
We Super Promise was far more believable.

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This worked fooooor 6 years.

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In 1165 a Rabbi who helped teach Maimonides
and his brother was found out to be Jewish.

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He refused to convert, so he was executed,
and this was the sign to pack it up and go.

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They travelled east across North Africa for
the next few years, intending to settle in

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the Holy Land, but discovering upon their
arrival that the Christian Crusader Kingdom

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of Jerusalem was quite unwelcoming of Jews.

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Presumably their quota of Token Jewish Friend
was filled by Jesus, so the rest could scram.

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As such, Maimonides and family doubled back
to the Egyptian Fatimid Caliphate, which had

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many of the same policies on religious toleration
as good old Al-Andalus.

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This marks the extraordinarily rare occasion
in which Openly-Jewish man named Moses finds

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unexpectedly warm welcome in Egypt — not
where I expected that story to go!

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After arriving in 1168, Maimonides spent the
remaining 36 years of his life in Cairo.

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And for many of the reasons I hyped up Cordoba
(for trade, cultural fusion, religious toleration,

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baller architecture, the list goes on), Medieval
Cairo is absolutely insane.

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When legendary travelers like Ibn Battuta
go out of their way to come back to Cairo

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again and again, writing passages about how
it’s the most majestic city in the world,

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we ought to recognize that it was a neat place.

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SO, Maimonides, now living openly-Jewish in
one of the most splendid locations on earth,

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had access to incalculable volumes of collected
scholarship from the eastern Islamic world,

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which added to his already-bursting knowledge
of Jewish theology, biblical law, and classical

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philosophy.

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However, his career as an independent scholar
would be derailed by two massive shocks.

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The first was personal, as Maimonides’ brother
David sailed out to the Indian Ocean in the

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hopes of getting rich but drowned at sea,
losing the entire family fortune in the wreck

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and leaving Maimonides to take care of his
widow and daughter.

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The tragedy left Maimonides bedridden with
grief for an entire year, and for the rest

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of his life he was inconsolable for the loss
of his beloved brother.

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So now needing to financially support two
families, Maimonides set aside his private

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scholarship and put his knowledge to use as
a physician.

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The Second major shock was political, as a
Fatimid Vizier declared himself the Caliph

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of a new dynasty in 1174, and so Saladin became
the man in charge of Egypt.

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Maimonides may well have been frantically
recalling his childhood memories of when the

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Almohads came into town, but unlike last time
Saladin was perfectly happy to keep everything

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running smoothly, and that meant continuing
the policy of religious toleration, so Maimonides

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was in the clear.

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And in fact, these two plotlines converge,
as his career as a physician swiftly made

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him famous in Cairo and resulted in him becoming
the personal physician to Sultan Saladin himself.

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This is even more bonkers when we recall that
medicine was Maimonides’ fallback job, and

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that he used his prestige from working in
the royal court to promote his philosophical

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and legal scholarship.

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SO, all that biographic context brings us
to the point of what Maimonides was actually

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writing about.

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Because his life’s story is inherently fascinating
for the places he lived and the huge historical

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events he witnessed firsthand, but his books
are the reason he is, to this day, so highly

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esteemed in Philosophy and Law in general
and Judaism in particular.

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Over the course of his life he wrote dozens
of books and treatises on a variety of topics,

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but three stick out.

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His earliest Big Boy Smart Book was the Commentary
on the Mishna, published shortly before his

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arrival in Cairo.

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It’s a comprehensive analysis of the entire
Oral Torah, and while scholarly commentary

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on Biblical law was a tradition dating back
millennia, no one did it all at once like

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that.

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The introduction section to the work also
included several relevant philosophical essays

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and a set of 13 principles defining the Jewish
Faith.

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Like all but one of Maimonides’ works, this
was written in a hybrid language called Judeo-Arabic,

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which is Arabic speech transliterated into
the Hebrew script.

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The only exception to that trend was his next
great book, The Mishne Torah, which was written

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entirely in Hebrew, and casually sets out
to explain every aspect and detail of Jewish

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law.

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all of it.

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whole thing.

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just casj…

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This absolute mammoth of a task was accomplished
by cutting through centuries upon centuries

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of previous scholarship and distilling complex
issues into simple and straightforward principles

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that any Jewish reader could understand, and,
critically, have access to all in one place.

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With the Jewish Diaspora spread so far across
civilizations, scholarship from, say, Al-Andalus

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developed along a different trajectory from
that of, say, Egypt.

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So having been to many different places and
having conversed directly with Rabbis from

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various local communities, Maimonides was
in an excellent position to bring together

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disparate interpretations into one book.

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He didn’t just say that “these are the
rules, you gotta do them, book says” but

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he explained why the rules are there and what
they accomplish.

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His greatest philosophical work is the Guide
for the Perplexed, written in the style of

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a letter, a very long letter, from him to
a student of his that is unsure of whether

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to purse religious studies or philosophy.

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The answer of course is “Porque no los dos?”
as Maimonides harmonizes the rationalism of

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Aristotelian philosophy with the prophetic
Revelation that’s central to Jewish theology.

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So, taking a cue from the earlier Muslim scholars
Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, Maimonides takes his

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own crack at fortifying theology with reason
by using philosophy as a vehicle to explore

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the majesty of divinity.

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This does require wrangling some pesky contradictions,
since Genesis doesn’t really jive with classical

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physics, but Maimonides argues that much of
the narrative in the Torah is allegorical

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rather than literal: because while human reason
is powerful, it’s limited, and the actual

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nature of God is far more complex than our
puny human minds can comprehend, so us smooth-brain

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dum dums can only understand Him allegorically.

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And this supports his conception of Negative
Theology: We can’t know what God is, so

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we can only describe him by what He’s not.

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It’s a swerve, but it works!

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These were of course rather spicy positions
to take, so The Guide was periodically banned

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and even burned, but Maimonides’ didn’t
care.

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He retorted that he’d rather teach truth
to one intelligent man than entertain 10,000

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fools, and damn if those aren’t words to
live by.

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He may have been writing to a mainly Jewish
audience but man was he dropping some universal

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truths.

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Maimonides remains a monumental figure in
the history of Jewish thought, and his work

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inspired centuries of later philosophers and
Abrahamic theologians.

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Meanwhile, I haven’t even mentioned his
medical writings, but they were a crucial

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step in medieval science.

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Even though his specific prescriptions are
now out of-date, his systematic approach to

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medicine, focus on the patient’s well-being,
and attention to public hygiene all remain

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foundational to the way doctors and nurses
to their work.

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And I think that’s neat.

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Maimonides himself is not a historian and
he didn’t write about the history he experienced,

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but his life and his ideas derive directly
from the world he lived in.

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Maimonides is so fascinating because his life
serves as a viewpoint through which we can

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clearly experience a massive and winding period
in History that’s usually pretty tough to

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pin down.

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He leads us through the glories and struggles
of two towering civilizations on each end

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of the Mediterranean, but his experience as
a Jewish scholar in particular gives us an

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extra angle into Medieval Islamic multiculture,
and the tangible result of all that are his

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writings: carrying the torch from Muslim thinkers
before him by investigating Judaism with a

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philosophical perspective.

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To me, he embodies the history and the character
of the Islamic Golden Age in a way that few

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others can…

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And he was Saladin’s DOCTOR.

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GOD he’s so cool!

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Thank you so much for watching.

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I had to stretch a little to make Maimonides
count as a History-Maker but seeing as I make

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the rules around here I’m confident in my
choices.

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It had been entirely too long since I last
talked about Al-Andalus, so I’m glad I was

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able to rectify that here.

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Special thanks to our community of supporters
on Patreon, if you’d like to see your name

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up here like these cool cats, hop on over
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