The Birth of Maimonides and the Years of Wandering
Moshe ben Maimon is born in Cordoba; the fanatical Almohads drive his family from Spain, and the road of exile brings him to Egypt as the sultan's physician and head of its Jewry.
Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon was born in Cordoba around 4898, son of a communal judge. He was ten when the Almohads, Berber zealots, took Spain and offered Jews and Christians a simple choice: Islam, exile or death. The Golden Age ended in a single year. The family left Cordoba, wandered the south for nearly a decade, moved to Fez in Morocco—where matters were no better—and then sailed to the Land of Israel.
Maimonides recorded the crossing: a storm on the fifth day, a vow to fast on that date for life, landing at Acre, going up to Jerusalem to pray at the Temple site, and travelling to the cave of Machpelah. Life in a land ruined by the Crusaders was impossible, and the family moved on to Fustat, near Cairo.
There disaster struck: his brother David, the merchant whose earnings supported them all, drowned in the Indian Ocean with their fortune. Maimonides lay ill for a year. Recovering, he turned to medicine and became physician to Saladin's vizier. He described his day in a letter: at the palace from dawn, home by evening to a waiting room full of patients, and only at night, Torah.
At twenty-three he had begun his Commentary on the Mishnah, finishing at thirty; it contains the Eight Chapters and the Thirteen Principles of Faith.
How we know
Sources
Rishonim
- Rambam, introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah — his own view of the chain of Torah transmission
Documents of the period
- the letter to Rabbi Shmuel ibn Tibbon — a description of a sultan’s physician’s day — in his own words
Scholarship
- Iggeret HaShmad — the defence of those converted under threat of death — an answer to the Almohad persecution
- the introduction to Chapter Chelek (13 principles) — the thirteen principles of faith
Basis: tradition.
People and places
Rif—Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi · Yehuda HaLevi · Avraham ibn Ezra · Rambam · Cordoba · Mishneh Torah · Guide for the Perplexed · Fustat · Fez · Ri Migash—Rabbi Yosef ibn Migash · Rabbi Maimon ben Yosef