Maimonides (i. e. son of Maimon), Moses, also called by the Jews Rambam, from the initial letters C2"7an = ',n:aia p n'a'2 ''■\, R. Moses b.-Maimun, axvX by the Arabians Abu Amram Musa b.-Maimnn Obeid A Hah, one of the greatest of the Jews since the exile — the great luminarv, the glory of Israel, the second Mo- ses, the reformer of Judaism, as he is called, was born at Cordova, March SO, 1135. As a j'outh, he received his instruction in the Heb. Scriptures, the Talmud, and Jewish literature from his father, R. Maimon, who held the dignity of judge of the Jews, as also his forefathers had held it for some centuries previous, and was himself renowned as a scholar and author of a commentary on Esther, a work on the laws of the Jewish prayers and fes- tivals, a commentary on the Talmud, etc., etc. But for instruction in the Arabic, then the predominant lan- guage of Spain, as the country was in the hantls of the IMohammedans, and mathematics, and astronomy, IMoses was handed over to the care of the reno^med Arabian philosophers Averroes and Ibn-Thofeil (compare Jost, Gesch. d. Israelilen, vi, 168). Spain, in which the Jews had found an earl)- home (some say as early as the days of Solomon ; compare Ride, A'r( rrn'te, p. 146 sq. ; Lindo, Hist, of the Jars of Spain and Portugal, p. 1 sq.; Da Cos- ta, Israel and the Gentiles, p. 211), is by Milman (History of the Jews, iii, 155) spoken of as the country in which " the golden age of the Jews shone with the brightest and most enduring splendor." In the early days of Christianit)' we find the .Tew alluded to by Church coun- cils [sec Ei.viK.v], and legislation enacted in his lichalf; but, to the shame of Christianity be it said, the Jew en- joyed his greatest privileges in the Iberian peninsula
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under Mussulman rule, and '"from the conquest by the Moors till towards the end of the 10th century, when, while Christian Europe lay in darkness, Moliammedan Cordova might be considered the centre of civilization, of arts, and of letters, .... the Jews, under the enjoy- ments of equal rights and privileges, rivalled their mas- ters, or, rather, their compatriots, in their advancement to wealth, splendor, and cultivation" (Milman). In Spain alone, and only under Mussulman reign, the Jews in the JVIiddle Ages enjoyed religious liberty and the privi- lege of their own jurisdiction, and it was in Spain alone tliat the Jews, since their Babylonian exile, developed a nobility which to this day is considered the aristocracy of the dispersed people of Israel (compare Da Costa, Is- rael and the Gentiles, p. 204). Need we wonder that un- der such very favorable conditions, which became en- dangered only now and then, the Spanish Jews developed a very active spiritual life, and a desire for culture and science w'hich produced noteworthy fruits ? " The Jews in the Arabic provinces," says Da Costa (p. 223), in speak- ing of the Saracen rule in Spain, "were rarely bankers, but merchants, trading on a large scale to different parts of the East. They acted as treasurers to the califs, but more frequently as physicians, philosophers, poets, the- ologians— in a word, as savans and men of letters." Es- pecially worthy to be called the golden age of Spanish Judaism was the age that gave birth to Moses Maimon- ides. While the Jews, who at that time lived under less favorable circumstances in France and Germany, were disinclined to all scientific endeavors, and all their spiritual activity became absorbed in the study of the Talmud, the Spanish Jews vied in all sciences — in phi- losophy, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and in po- etry, with the flower of the Arabian genius. Formerly the Jews of the Iberian peninsula had derived their learning of the Biblical writings and their commentators from the famous schools of Babylon and Persia, whither the young were sent for theological instruction ; but when, by sheer accident, a noted Eastern rabbi of the 10th century found a home in these Western coasts (see Eabbi Moses, " clad in sackcloth :" comi)are Milman, iii, 1.56, and other histories of the Jews), and " the light of learning, which, by the rapid progress of the iron age of Judaism in Babylonia, by the extinction of the author- ity^ of the prince of the captivity, the dispersion of the illustrious teachers, and the final closing of the great schools, seemed to have set forever, it suddenh- rose again in the West in renewed and undismayed splendor." From this time (A.D. 990) the schools of the Spanish Eab- banim (at Cordova, Toledo, Barcelona, and Granada) not only became the centre of Jewish civilization and learn- ing, but the auxiliaries of the Arabian philosophers in their endeavor to keep alive the flame of learning during the deep darkness of the IMiddle Ages, and the Jews be- came the communicators of Arabian philosophy to the Christian world, or, as Tennemann (Manual of Philoso- pluj. transl. by IMoreU, p. 231) has it, '■ the interpreters be- tween the Saracens and the Western nations." It was at such a time — when the heaven of Spanish Judaism was resplendent with stars of its greatest magnitude — Solo- mon Ibn-Gebirol (1021-1070), Jehudah Halevi (1086- 1142), Aben- Ezra (1092-1167), David Kimchi (1160- 1240), a galaxy of great and learned men of which any nation might well be proud — that ]\Ioses Maimonides lived, «Tote, and flourished as the brightest ornament of them all.