78 CHAPTER THREE
He clearly was an elitist,^106 but he also believed that some fundamen-
tals (usul) ought to be taught to people belonging to all levels of soci-
ety. As mentioned above, Maimonides adopted the Almohad position
in imposing the rejection of anthropomorphism as an article of faith.
Apparently, he viewed the demythologizing interpretation of scriptures
regarding the Messiah as belonging, to some extent, to the same
category.
Maimonides’ approach to this question may be refl ected in yet an-
other aspect of his description of the Messiah. In general, Maimonides
sees the duties of the righ teous king— any king, not just the Messiah— as
“to proclaim the true religion, to fi ll the world with justice, to break the
arm of evil and to fi ght the wars of the Lord; for the fi rst purpose of ap-
pointing a king is to do justice and fi ght wars.”^107 In describing the role
of the king as spreading justice, Maimonides’ Hebrew here (“le-mal’ot
ha-olam tzedeq”) is strikingly reminiscent of the Arabic formula for de-
scribing the role of the Mahdi (“an yamlaa al- ardadlan ka- ma muliat
juran”). This formula is prevalent in both Shiite and Sunni texts, and
was also used to describe the Mahdi Ibn Tumart.^108 The role of the king,
however, is not just to spread justice and proclaim the true religions, but
to do so by sword. This royal image becomes even more pronounced
in the description of the ultimate king, the Messiah. As noted by Joel
Kraemer, Maimonides’ depiction of the Messiah is characterized by an
overwhelming insistence on his military role.^109 One suspects that the
frequent military campaigns of the Almohads, in which they were accom-
paniedby a magnifi cent copy of the Quran and advancing under the
banner of the Mahdi, offered Maimonides a Messianic model that went
well with his reading of the Laws of Kings, both in Deuteronomy and in
the Talmud.
The presence of this model imposes on us a slight modifi cation of our
somewhat bookish image of Maimonides as a po litical phi losopher. As
“the disciple of al- Farabi,” Maimonides “took the Alfarabian theory of
the relationship between philosophy, religion, jurisprudence and theol-
ogy and applied it in a thoroughgoing manner to a par ticular religion,
Judaism.”^110 Both the Platonic and the Jewish models, however, remained
(^106) Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides, 469– 71, speaks of Maimonides’
“overt acknowledgement of elitism.”
(^107) Mishneh Torah,Laws of Kings, 4:10.
(^108) See, for example, a variation of it in a panegyric poem on Ibn Tumart; Luciani, Le livre
de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, 11.
(^109) Kraemer, “On Maimonides’ Messianic Posture,” 130– 31 (“a warrior- Messiah, an armed
prophet”).
(^110) See Berman, “Maimonides the Disciple of al- Farabi.”