124 CHAPTER FOUR
On the other hand, when he exhorts his simple readers to remain
within the limits of their understanding and not to seek further, he seems
closer to Averroes’s position in Fasl al- maqal, a book written as a re-
sponse to Ghazali’s Faysal al- tafriqa.^171 If Maimonides knew Averroes’s
Fasl al- maqal, as I believe he did, it is also very likely that he was familiar
with Ghazali’s Faysal al- tafriqa. Along with the works of previous Jewish
thinkers, these and similar works by contemporary Muslims served Mai-
monides as a reservoir of pre cedents for his treatment of the midrashim
as well as of the people who believe in them. Adapting his response to the
particular cases he had to confront, he tapped into this reservoir, making
the necessary adjustments to the particularity of the Jewish community.
One should also note, however, that no Muslim thinker could simply
reject traditions that had been accepted as recording the Prophet’s say-
ing. Early mutazilitekalam, which very reluctantly accepted traditions
in general and irrational traditions in par ticular, could do so only by de-
nying the authenticity of these traditions. When Maimonides rejects out
of hand some of the recognized Talmudic midrashim as idle fantasy, he
is thus going further against religious literary tradition than any of the
Muslim thinkers did.^172
(^171) The relation between the two books is evident in their titles as well as in their contents;
see Stroumsa, “Philosophes almohades?” 1147– 48.
(^172) This does not include, of course, the freethinkers like Abu Bakr al- Razi, who seems to
have remained a Muslim only nominally. On Maimonides’ “politics of public teaching,”
see R. Lerner, Maimonides’ Empire of the Light: Pop ular Enlightenment in an Age of Belief
(Chicago and London, 2000).