Maimonides was born in 1135 in Cordoba, Spain. When the Almohads conquered Cordoba in 1148, Jews either converted, were killed, or went into exile. Maimonides and his family went to Fez, Morocco and later moved to Fustat, Egypt in 1168. While in Egypt, Maimonides wrote several influential works and established himself as an important philosopher and physician. He developed medical theories based on careful observation and study of sources like Galen, though he was skeptical of some of Galen's ideas which were not well supported. Maimonides made important contributions to medicine and had a significant influence on Jewish thought.

1. Maimonides and his medieval world
Dave Shafer
CHJ
Artist’s conception here. Nobody knows
what he looked like. No selfies survived.

2. Maimonides
was born in
1135 in
Cordoba,
Spain.

3. It is famous today
for architectural
gems like this
Roman bridge
from 2100 years
ago.

4. Islam expanded outwards from North Africa and Arabia. Spain was invaded
from Morocco and a Caliphate was established that covered most of Spain and
Portugal. Jews had a long history there with ups and downs in how Islam
accepted them in their midst.

5. The Qu’ran,
coming from a
desert culture,
spells out what
heaven is like –
lots of water
and flowers and
trees. So Islamic
rulers have
always been big
on beautiful
gardens and
pools, like this
one in Cordoba

6. There is a statute of Maimonides in
Cordoba, his birthplace, and here Relly
and Andrew Coleman are seen giving
him an upgrade to his smart phone.

7. His Hebrew name is
Rabbi Moshe ben
Maimon ( ‫בן‬ ‫משה‬ ‫רבי‬
‫,)מימון‬ whose acronym
forms "Rambam"
(‫,)רמב״ם‬ his knickname.
A Berber
dynasty, the
Almohads,
conquered
Cordoba in 1148.
Jews either
converted, were
killed, or went
into exile.
Maimonides and
family went to
Fez, Morocco.

8. Maimonides
house in Fez,
Morocco
North African bazars today
While in Fez, he composed his
acclaimed commentary on the
Mishnah, during the years 1166–1168,
when he was 31 to 33 years old.

9. Fabric and leather dying vats
in Fez, Morocco

10. Maimonides and family eventually moved in 1168 from Fez to
Fustat, Egypt – the old capitol of Egypt right outside modern Cairo.
At that time Egypt was more hospitable to Jews than Spain was.
Ruins of Fustat (Old Cairo)

11. Maimonides’s
parents and
extended family
pooled almost all
their money and
sent his brother
on a trading
expedition that
could have been
very profitable,
although risky.
While at sea a
storm capsized
the ship and the
brother and all
the money went
to the bottom of
the ocean.

12. “The greatest misfortune that has befallen me during my entire life—worse than
anything else—was the demise of the saint, may his memory be blessed, who drowned
in the Indian sea, carrying much money belonging to me, to him, and to others, and left
with me his little daughter and a widow. On the day I received that terrible news I fell ill
and remained in bed for about a year, suffering from a sore boil, fever, and depression,
and was almost given up. About eight years have passed, but I am still mourning and
unable to accept consolation. And how should I console myself? He grew up on my
knees, he was my brother, and he was my student”.
The death of his brother caused
Maimonides to become sick with grief. In a
letter later found in the Cairo Geniza, at Ben
Ezra Synagogue, he wrote:

13. Legend has it that the site of the Ben
Ezra synagogue in Cairo, where the letter
was found, is the place where baby
Moses was found in the reeds.
Here is the building before a big
restoration project.

14. You might wonder
how a letter written
by Maimonides
about 1,000 years
ago has survived
until now – the
actual original
document. The
answer is an
amazing story.

15. At the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo they intended to bury not just damaged Torah scrolls
but any document with the word for God written on it, which included letters, contracts,
prayers, etc. But they never got around to the burial part, just the saving part, for 1,000
years! The result is the Cairo gineza and we now know a lot about the medieval Jewish
world from it. This find was as important as the Dead Sea scrolls.

16. Solomon Schechter, a Hebrew scholar at Cambridge in 1897 on a trip to the Ben Ezra
synagogue in Cairo discovered an enormous trove of documents going back over
1,000 years, hidden in a semi-forgotten storeroom (called a geniza) behind a wall. It
included the two oldest Haggadahs known to exist. In all, a few hundred thousand
documents that had been gathering dust, some for over 1,000 years. (sounds like my office)
Documents being stored long
ago (artist’s image)

17. In England Oxford
and Cambridge
Universities are
intensely competitive,
in both sports and
academics. Two great
Hebrew scholars are
shown here. Solomon
Schechter at right, of
Cambridge and Adolf
Neubauer of Oxford.
They started out as
friends as this story
here begins.

18. Identical twin sisters Agnes and Margaret Smith were both Semitic scholars, with many
publications. In 1896 they returned from a trip to Cairo and gave a few ancient pages of Hebrew
text they had bought from a Cairo bookseller to their friend the scholar Solomon Schechter. He
was startled to see that this was the original text of an well-known ancient poem that only
existed in copies. An excited Schechter imagined there could be more where that came from.

19. Schechter excitedly told his Semitic
scholar friend at Oxford, Adolf
Neubauer, about this in a postcard.
Meanwhile Schechter made
preparations to go to Cairo and see if
he could find the source of this
ancient document. By chance he
learned that Neubauer was now also
planning to make the same trip, due
to that postcard. Enraged, Schechter
set off ASAP to see if he could beat
Neubauer to Cairo and not get
scooped by his friend/rival. Scratch
that. Former friend/rival.
Schechter got there first.

20. Schechter at work sorting
through his immense findings.
Restored synagogue today
Among the enormous number of
findings – the letter Maimonides wrote

21. Maimonides “Guide
for the Perplexed”,
part I, chapters 14-18.
Original text from the
Cairo gineza. Date is
about 1200. Dry
climate of Cairo helps
preserve manuscripts.

22. Maimonides should sue for plagiarism –
everyone is copying his famous essay title

23. In 1986 I gave an invited technical talk at a conference in
which I referred to Maimonides in the very first sentence.

24. The Maimonides
Medical Center in
New York is named in
honor of the very
wide fame that
Maimonides had as a
physician back 900
years ago.
He wrote about his
theories of health
and medicine and we
will look at some of
that now.

25. Medieval “medicine” was very primitive and things stayed that ways for hundreds of years. It
was party a mixture of folk remedies, superstitions, horrendous treatments of dubious merit,
magic potions and some actual treatments we today would call medicine.
But Islamic scholars had translated some ancient Greeks about medicine, like Galen, and they
made a serious attempt to work up some theories of medicine. Maimonides was very much of
that school of thought, with critical and skeptical examination of “popular” medical ideas.
We will now look at some Marx Brothers “Medicine”

26. Timing = 2:45 - end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWau06EsfRY

27. Some popular “treatments” for whatever ails you were relatively harmless,
especially if done when you were not sick (!!) , like bloodletting and cupping
(placing leeches against certain parts of your body).

28. “drugs” were available at an apothecary and they could be very odd
mixtures, some poisonous. A real witch’s brew of “wing of bat, eye of
newt”, etc. Some had mercury or arsenic.

29. Some practices we still do today – encouraging
someone to vomit if they have swallowed
something dangerous, or pulling a tooth –
notice that her hands are tied together and his
foot holds down her arms.

30. Enemas were thought to be a general cure-all. There was a lot of attention
given to hemorrhoids and Maimonides wrote a whole treatise on it

31. “But the hand of the LORD was
heavy upon those of Ashdod,
and He destroyed them and
smote them with hemorrhoids,
even Ashdod and the borders
thereof”
1 Samuel 5, verse 6
This ailment seems to have been on people’s minds (as well as the
other end of the body) a lot even in biblical times.

32. Brain surgery has been
practiced for at least 5,000
years. You got a bad headache?
Feeling anxious? Then just get a
hole put in the top of your head
to relieve the pressure. Go to
your barber and say “a little off
the top, please”

33. Above is a skull from Peru from 900 years ago, same
era as that Maimonides. On left is a skull that shows
two or more successful brain surgeries from ancient
Egypt, over 3,000 years before Maimonides. By the
degree of bone healing one can tell how long the
person lived afterwards. Person above should wear a
hat or use sun block on top when outside.

34. The caladrius was a bird (mythical)
thought to exist and if it landed on a sick
person and then looked away that
meant the person would die. If it looked
towards them then they would recover.
Of course there was no such bird.

35. Cataract surgery was common. How about using a smaller knife?

36. Back then, as now,
“medicine” was
tailored to the
individual patient.

37. From his letters it is
clear that Maimonides
was a very emphatic
person and he most
probably had a great
bed-side manner

38. The writings of the Greek physician Galen
(130 AD – 210 AD were extremely influential
throughout the ancient world. He had
theories of medicine that were based on the
idea of imbalances among various
“humours” in the body, such as black bile
and yellow bile. Many of his false ideas
lasted well over 1000 to 1500 years, right up
to the time of Maimonides and well beyond.
He thought that our brains were simply
glands of unknown function.
Maimonides studied his work very carefully and was quite skeptical of some of it.

39. Maimonides was interested in actual
careful observation, like in this puzzle to
the left, instead of data-free theorizing
as Galen and other Greeks like Aristotle
were often prone to do.

40. Cause and effect
relationships were
not very clearly
understood back
then. Especially if the
effect did not
immediately occur,
although it does here.
And which was the
cause and which the
effect could also be
confused, as it
sometimes is even
today. Give example.

42. The Moslem scholar Ibn al-
Nafis,(1213-1288) wrote the
Commentary on Anatomy in
Avicenna's Canon in 1242 in
which he provided the first
known accurate description
of pulmonary circulation.
That was based on careful
observation.
Islam and Judaism were alike in
thinking differently from the
Greeks.

43. Saladin was a great
warrior and a wise ruler.
He took back Jerusalem
from the Crusaders,
who had taken it from
him. He had heard of
the great fame of
Maimonides as a
physician and had him
become his own
personal doctor as well
as for his family.

44. While Maimonides
was being the
personal physician
to Saladin, Saladin
and Richard the
Lion-Hearted were
battling it out for
the control of
Jerusalem, as part
of the 3rd Crusade.

45. The two
leaders
had a lot
of respect
for each
other,
both as
military
generals
and as
people.

46. Control of Jerusalem went back and
forth between the Crusaders as the
Moslems. When the Crusaders won
it for the first time they immediately
slaughtered everyone there, men
women and children. After all, they
were heathen – barely people.
When Saladin later defeated
Richard the Lionhearted in battle,
Richard assumed his fate would be
the same. He was astonished that
Saladin treated him and the other
Crusaders very humanely as we do
today (the Geneva Convention).

47. You can get a chess set with these
pieces and try to play out this historic
struggle yourself. Richard, at the end
of the infamous Siege of Acre,
accepted the voluntary surrender of
the city. He then led 2,700 people
outside the city walls and had them
beheaded (no fair!) within sight of
Saladin. The Crusaders were, for the
most part, much more savage and
brutal than their Moslem opponents.
Nothing like a religious war to stir up
one’s passions. At that time England
and Europe were in the Dark Ages
while Islam was an advanced
civilization.

48. Saladin was a Kurd, not an Arab.
Kurds are originally an Iranian ethnic
group and they speak Kurdish, which is
an Indo-European language, as is
English. We think of the Crusades
being between Christians and Arabs
but that is not correct. Saladin was
nothing like contemporary Arab rulers
then and was a very humane person –
really a mensch. Maimonides may
have spoken Kurdish, as part of his job
working for Saladin, as well as Arabic
and various other local languages

49. Empire of Saladin
(1138 – 1193)
Kurdish ruled, not
by Arabs

50. One of my favorite movies is “Ivanhoe”, from 1952,
based on Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel. Richard the
Lionhearted is in it, as the King of England away at the
Crusades. 20 year old Elizabeth Taylor plays the beautiful
Jewess - Rebecca of York. A knight is besotted with her.

51. But I digress

52. A nephew of the Sultan
Saladin (Maimonides’
boss) was very randy and
asked Maimonides to
prepare for him a list of
aphrodisiacs. He did and
distributed it under the
title “On cohabitation”.
When you read what the
ingredients are of these
love potions and where
you are supposed to put
them it is enough to
dissuade anyone from sex.
It turns out there is a short real version and a long fake bogus one from back then.

53. Saladin’s son suffered from asthma and
Maimonides wrote a treatise on the topic with
ideas for treatment.

54. At the time this letter was written, Maimonides was court physician to Saladin,
who was 64 years old and would die four years later. September 30, 1199,
Maimonides wrote this letter.
I will write you my daily schedule:
I live in Fostat, and the Sultan lives Cairo. The distance between them is 4000 cubits [a mile and a half]. My duties to
the Sultan are very heavy. I must see him every morning to check on his health. If one day he doesn’t feel well, or
one of the princes or the women of his harem doesn’t feel well, I cannot leave Cairo that day. It often happens that
there is an officer or two who needs me, and I have to attend to healing them all day. Therefore, as a rule, I am in
Cairo early each day, and even if nothing unusual happens, by the time I come back to Fostat, half the day is gone.
Under no circumstances do I come earlier. And I am ravenously hungry by then. When I come home, my foyer is
always full of people – Jews and non-Jews, important people and not, judges and policemen, people who love me
and people who hate me, a mixture of people, all of whom have been waiting for me to come home. I get off of my
donkey, wash my hands, and go out into the hall to see them. I apologize and ask that they should be kind enough to
give me a few minutes to eat. That is the only meal I take in twenty-four hours. Then I go out to heal them, write
them prescriptions and instructions for treating their problems. Patients go in and out until nightfall, and
sometimes – I swear to you by the Torah – it is two hours into the night before they are all gone. I talk to them and
prescribe for them even while lying down on my back from exhaustion. And when night begins, I am so weak, I
cannot even talk anymore.

55. Part of ruins of Saladin’s original castle, where Maimonides came to
administer to him. On right is current castle, built over centuries, and now
used for government offices.

56. To this day there is interest in the
medical writings of Maimonides
and his insights into health and
illness, all very unusual for the
times he lived in.

57. A popular topic in the time and place where Maimonides lived was
the magic approach to medicine, not the rational investigations and
opinions of Maimonides. In addition there was much interest in both
magic love potions and magic spells that could control the desired
person, invariably a woman. One of the sillier of these is shown next.

58. Beyond these canonical works, the
Genizah reveals profane and even
occult texts related to superstition
and magic; it holds spells for erotic
conquest, and others for inflicting
bodily harm. (One leaf had this
enchantment to make a woman
sleep with you: “Take your trousers
and put them on over your head, so
that you are naked. Say: ‘So-and-so
son of So-and-so is doing this for So-
and-so daughter of So-and-so, in
order that she will dream that I sleep
[with] her and she sleeps with me.’”)

59. Starting with Abraham Maimonides,
Sufism played a seminal role in the
development of Jewish spirituality,
strongly influencing the direction of
the Kabbalah and, later on, the
growth of Hasidism. As improbable
as it sounds, the Sufi innovations in
the Jewish religion begun by
Abraham Maimonides were almost
assuredly the single most important
thing to happen to Jewish
spirituality since the destruction of
the Second Temple in 70 C.E.
Son of Maimonides

60. Whirling Sufi dervishes in modern
day performance for tourists

61. Some Israeli Jews, like this
college teacher have become
attracted to 13th century
Moslem Sufi dervish practices
and their spirituality content.

62. The Torah is a tangled mess of laws
of conduct and sometimes
contradictions about what to do.
Maimonides organized everything,
sorted out contradictions and
grouped together similar topics. The
result was his magnum opus, the
Mishneh Torah.
It took someone 9 days to
organize the wires shown here.

63. Mishneh Torah - Maimonides’ magnum opus
Here in both Hebrew and English

64. 9. Korbanot (Offerings) 1. Korban Pesach: the Passover offering2. Chagigah:
the festival offering3. Bechorot: laws regarding first-born children4.
Shegagot: Offerings for Unintentional Transgressions5. Mechussarey
Kapparah: Offerings for Those with Incomplete Atonement6. Temurah:
Substitution
10. Taharah (Ritual Purity) 1. Tumat Met: defilement by coming into contact
with death2. Para Aduma: the red heifer3. Tumat Zara’at: defilement by
tzara'at4. Metamei Mischkaw u-Moschaw tangential defilement5. She'ar
Avot haTumot other sources of defilment6. Tumat Ochalin: defilement of
foods7. Kelim: vessels8. Mikvaot: laws regarding the mikvah
Here are two of the topics that show how Maimonides grouped
together in one place similar items spread out throughout the Torah

65. The Harry Potter sorting
hat would have come in
handy back then because
Maimonides had to do a
lot of grouping of laws
and rules the hard way –
by careful examination of
the Torah’s jumble of
material bit by bit.

66. Timing - 5:42 to end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpMkdjYKCj8

67. The religious writings
of Maimonides were an
unwelcome big surprise
to the very conservative
Jewish community.

68. There was an immediate negative
reaction from the Jewish community.
People didn’t like his way of reorganizing
the Torah contents. They didn’t like that
he gave no sources for his conclusions.
And they especially did not like the
implication that this magnum opus by
Maimonides meant that there was no
need to continue studying the Talmud
(which Maimonides had never said). But
he felt that this negative reaction would
fade with time and that in the long run
his work would come to be greatly
valued.

69. 400 years after
Maimonides, in
Holland, Spinoza
also got in trouble
with the Jewish
establishment.
The son of
Maimonides spent
his life defending
his father’s work
from its many
critics.

70. Maimonides 1135-1204
Spinoza got in trouble for major heresies,
while Maimonides simply stirred the pot by
regrouping and organizing existing religious
texts. That disturbed the establishment.

71. It is easy to get Maimonides confused with Rashi, a famous French
rabbi who also wrote commentaries on the Torah and who lived around
the same time as Maimonides (actually 100 years earlier), but far away
in France.

72. When I was in college I saw someone
carrying this book and I glanced at the title. It
seemed absurd to me, that such a book should
exist. I could understand writing a book about
the greatest of centuries, or even the 2nd
greatest century. The 3rd greatest seemed like
some academic trying to find something to
write about. But the thirteenth greatest!! Just
ridiculous!
Years late I found our that the correct title is
not “The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries”,
but “The Thirteenth: Greatest of Centuries”
Maimonides died in 1204, at the very beginning of the thirteenth century

73. The twelfth century should maybe be considered
the greatest of centuries, not the thirteenth century.
In addition of Maimonides and Rashi there was also
the Persian Moslem poet (the Rubiyat),
mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam
(1048 – 1131). As an example of the excellence of
Islamic science and math, when all of Europe was in
the dark ages and few were literate, Omar Khayyam
devised a calendar more accurate than the one we
here use today. With our rules of leap years and
special exceptions, our calendar gets off by one day
after 3,300 years, while Omar Khayyam’s goes 5,000
years before a one day error builds up.

74. This work by Maimonides was a very thorough
examination of those parts of the Torah and other
writings that seemed to imply meanings to
passages that are in conflict with other passages.
For example, the “hand of God” seems to imply
that God has a body, like us (only better!) yet other
passages state that God is not a physical being.

75. Maimonides showed that the resulting
confusion is due to taking certain words or
phrases literally in some contexts and figuratively
in others, or that the words have several
different meanings as shown by a survey of their
occurrence elsewhere in the Torah or other
writings. The attempt was to show that there
are rational ways of explaining things like
miracles and other puzzling aspects of the Torah.
Maimonides wanted to import the rational
thinking of Aristotle into Judaism. That was a
new idea. 400 years later Spinoza tried the same
thing (and was booted out of the Jewish
community).

76. This shows how
knowledge of
ancient Egyptian
culture can
throw light on
some biblical
phrases and
explain what
seems to imply
that God has a
body, and a
finger.

77. Here is an example of
using the methods of
Maimonides today,
where I try to explain
a puzzling passage in
the Torah by using a
rational approach.

78. The idiots on the internet
who believe that Jews have
horns also can’t spell or
write grammatically.
Furthermore, the Torah never says
or implies that anyone had horns
except Moses. Nobody else.
Mohammed probably had epilepsy.
Does that mean that all Moslems
have epilepsy?

83. Another great work by
Maimonides was the Pirkei
Avot, or the Sayings or Ethics
of the Fathers. It was a
collection of wisdom from
sages going back to 1300
years before his time as well
as more recent ones. The
sayings were about ethics
and codes of conduct.

84. The sayings of
the sages are
grouped into
these 17
categories here

85. The Jewish calendar is based
on a lunar month and the start of
a new month is pegged to the
first visibility of a crescent moon.
Maimonides did some math
calculations to show if any given
(supposed) sighting from
Jerusalem was theoretically
possible, so bogus sightings
could be rejected. He use Arab
astronomy tables in his
calculations. He vehemently
rejected astrology as a valid field.

86. In summary, Maimonides was a towering
intellect during medieval Judaism and very
influential from his writings.
Could have
been in CHJ