The collapse of Jewish life in Muslim Spain elicited three responses from
the Jews, each of which reflected a distinct view of the future of Jewish life in
the diaspora: migration to elsewhere in the Muslim world, migration to the
Land of Israel, and migration to Christian northern Spain. The contours of
each of these responses can be described with reference to the lives of Moses
Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi, and the Ibn Ezra family respectively.
The family of Moses Maimonides was among those who opted to migrate
elsewhere in the Muslim world. Maimonides was born in Córdoba in 1135.
When he was 13, Córdoba was conquered by the Almohads, Muslim funda-
mentalists from North Africa. The ensuing religious persecution prompted
the Maimon family to leave Córdoba and, after wandering for twelve years, to
settle in Fez, Morocco, by 1160. There Moses Maimonides studied with
Judah ha-Cohen ibn Susan. In 1165, Ibn Susan chose martyrdom over forced
conversion – a subtext of Maimonides’ treatise on the subject of forced con-
version. The Maimon family then moved to Cairo, so that Moses could fight
against the Karaites. Until 1168, Moses was supported by his brother David,
a physician. When David died in 1168, Moses studied medicine so as not to
have to earn a livelihood from the study of the Torah.
By 1177, Moses Maimonides was appointed the head of Jewish commu-
nity of Fustat, a suburb of Cairo, and would often be referred to as the Sage of
Fustat. In 1185, he was appointed the physician of Al-Fadil, royal vizier of
Egypt. From this point, he worked nearly around the clock as royal physician
and physician to the Jewish community. On the Sabbath, he addressed legal
and theological questions all day. Given this full schedule, it is hard to imag-
ine when Maimonides slept, let alone found the time to write books.
Nonetheless, he was a prolific scholar, producing some of the most influential
legal and philosophical works of his time. Chief among these was his legal
code, Mishneh Torah, written in clear, concise Hebrew for a broad Jewish audi-
ence. His philosophical treatise Guide to the Perplexed, which he wrote in
Arabic for the older children of the Jewish elite, was intended to resolve ten-
sions between Judaism and Greek philosophy; and his numerous epistles
dealt with a diverse array of subjects such as the Messiah and the status of
converts in Jewish communal life. A common thread in his varied works was
a sense of dislocation. In his introduction to the Mishneh Torah, as well as his
introduction to his commentary on the Mishneh, he noted a concern lest the
transmission of scholarship be interrupted by the travails of the time.
Yet neither the Maimon family’s response to the decline of Jewish Muslim
Spain nor the writings of Moses Maimonides revealed a sense of disillusion-
ment with the future of Jewish life in the diaspora, but only with Muslim
Spain. This was in contrast to the response of Yehuda Halevi, who despaired
of any future for Jewish life anywhere in the diaspora. Halevi, the greatest
Jewish poet in the history of the diaspora, was born c.1075 in Toledo amid
the tempestuous transition in Spain from Muslim to Christian rule. His
72 The Jews of Islam