Moses Maimonides: A Very Short Introduction

Summary

This Very Short Introduction to Moses Maimonides surveys his many intellectual, literary, and professional ventures. Born in Islamic Cordoba, he ultimately settled in Cairo, where he served as jurist and civic leader and a highly esteemed physician with responsibilities at the Fatimid and Ayyubid courts, even as he deepened his philosophical-theological pursuits. He moved seamlessly between specialized, private, and public Jewish and Muslim spheres.

His written works traverse multiple disciplines, employ several literary genres, and address various elite and popular audiences. This book organizes Maimonides's thinking and writings thematically and puts his works into dialogue with one another. It proposes that the key to engaging Maimonides on his own terms is to understand he applied a rationalist's regimen characteristic of his scientific research and practice of medicine to all of his life's work: he observed and studied a problem, diagnosed it, and then prescribed a remedy for it whether the concern was physical, metaphysical, spiritual, intellectual, or social in nature.

His Arabic and Hebrew contributions to each of his fields of inquiry were translated and disseminated far and wide and found a prominent place among religious and scientific intellectuals in the Latin West and throughout the Jewish and Islamic worlds.