106 CHAPTER FOUR
Maimonides as an Historian of ReligionThe seventeenth- century Hebraists whose approach to the study of reli-
gion was inspired by “Rabbi Moyses” were conditioned by the religious
and cultural concerns of their time. It would be incorrect, however, to
say that they imposed their ideas on the Maimonidean text. Maimonides’
keen interest in religion as a human phenomenon is indeed well attested.
As mentioned above, he was greatly infl uenced by Farabi’s studies of the
political and educational role of religion in society, but he carried Fara-
bi’s theory further and investigated its specifi c implementation in con-
crete religions.^105 His main interest was his own religion, and he dedi-
cated his analytical energy mostly to the study of the development of
Judaism. Nevertheless, he also used the same basic principles to under-
stand the development of Islam.
As noted by Hourani, medieval Jewish thinkers perceived the emer-
gence of Islam as a turning- point in history, since from that point Jews
came under Arab rule.^106 In seeking to understand such historical turning-
points, and in par ticular to fathom the reasons for their own submission
to other nations, Jewish thinkers usually focused on the relations be-
tween God and the Jewish people, and their explanations were formu-
lated in terms of punishment and exile, repentance and redemption. Nev-
ertheless, the third side of the triangle, the nations who serve as God’s
punishing rod, could not be ignored. Jewish historiography was required
to provide explanations for the choice of par ticular nations to rule over
the Jews and for the vicissitudes in their power, and the need to fi nd such
explanations became more urgent whenever their dominion was felt as
more oppressive. From the general presupposition that God governs his-
tory in the best and wisest way, it followed that there must be a reason
for the rise of one religious community and for the fall of another, and,
in the par ticular case at hand, there must be a reason for the disintegra-
tion of formidable kingdoms and bastions of culture like Christian Byz-
antium and Sassanian Iran and their conquest by a nation of uncouth
nomads.
Few medieval Jewish thinkers engaged in systematic historiography.^107
The study of history, when not part of the historia sacra, was often per-
(^105) See above, apud note 91.
(^106) Hourani, “Maimonides and Islam,” 158. On the different shades of Jewish attitudes to
Islam, see P. B. Fenton, “Jewish Attitudes to Islam: Israel Heeds Ishmael,” Jerusalem Quar-
terly 29 (1983): 84– 102.
(^107) See Y. Heinemann, “Judah Halevi’s Historical Perception,” Zion 9 (1949): 147– 77 [He-
brew]. The Midrashic and eschatological literatures tend to give more weight to historical
events, and the ones who were composed close to the rise of Islam refer to the Islamic