Jewish Mysticism in the Lands of the Ishmaelites: A Re-Orientation r 157was Maimonides’ only son, born in 1186, and upon the death of his father
in 1204, at the tender young age of 18, Abraham inherited the position of
Nagid, or ra’is al-yahud, the semiofficial leadership of Egyptian Jewry, a
kind of counter-exilarchate established by the Shi ̔ite Fatimids to offset
the similarly entitled position in Sunni Baghdad.^27
Maimonides was a controversial figure whose work came under at-
tack during his lifetime but even more ferociously after his death. He is
most famous for two works: a massive legal codex, the Mishneh Torah,
and a dense philosophical text, Dalalat al-Ha’irin, or “The Guide for the
Perplexed.” This latter work, though primarily an exegetical defense of
a rationalist Aristotelian interpretation of the Bible, lent itself to many
interpretations, and its concluding section, which discusses the concept
of the “Perfected Man” and the goal of the pious life, to “persist” in God’s
presence, touches on themes that were current in Islamic mysticism.^28 It
is therefore not surprising to learn of the Sufi master Hasan ibn Hud in
Damascus in the thirteenth century, who taught his students from the
Guide.^29
Whatever the interpretation, Maimonides’ work generated a bitter in-
ternal controversy amongst Jewish intellectuals. Some thought his work
too daring, too threatening. It was during one phase of this controversy
in the thirteenth century that Abraham wrote a book which served as a
defense of his father’s legacy. This book is entitled Kifayat al- ̔Abidin (“The
Complete Guide for the Pious”), which has been compared in structure
and content to al-Ghazali’s Ihya ̔Ulum al-Din.^30 Only a portion of the
Complete Guide survives, but if we extrapolate from the extant portion,
it was probably three times as long as his father’s original philosophical
work. Goitein, one of the principal researchers of this Egyptian pietist
tradition, says of the Kifayat al- ̔Abidin: “It united, in a unique combina-
tion, the three great religious elements of the Judaeo-Islamic culture of the
High Middle Ages: religious law, which pervaded all aspects of life with
its innumerable minutiae; ethical pietism, which gave meaning and sig-
nificance to all the injunctions of the Law; and finally, the spirit of Greek
philosophy, which brought system, order, and lucid reasoning into the
enormous mass of religious traditions.”^31 The work is a strenuous defense
of his father’s great writings, both the legal code and the philosophical
treatise. Ferocious in his defense, Abraham maintains that the ascetic and
pietistic turn he provides to his father’s system is precisely what his father