36 CHAPTER TWO
In addition to presenting a simplifi ed schema of the history of kalam,
Maimonides also attempts to describe its geographic boundaries, saying:
“As for the Andalusians among the people of our nation, all of them
cling to the affi rmations of the phi losophers and incline to their opinions,
in so far as these do not ruin the foundation of the Law. You will not fi nd
them in any way taking the paths of the mutakallimun.”^40
One recognizes in these lines a certain Andalusian local- patriotism,
discernible also in the works of Maimonides’ Muslim compatriots.^41 It is
indeed true that the kalam—and the Mutazila in particular— had few
followers in al- Andalus.^42 Among the Jews, however, the reality is again
less neat than Maimonides would have it. Although Rabbanite authors
from the Islamic West— such as Judah Halevi, Joseph Ibn Ñadiq, and
Dunash ben Tamim—were no mutakallimun,kalam is very present in
their discussions of such issues as creation of the world in time or the
divine attributes. Even Abraham Ibn Daud, Maimonides’ Andalusian
precursor in presenting a Jewish Aristotelian thought, does not hesitate
to heap praises upon Saadya’s Book of Beliefs. Maimonides does not
want to admit the possibility of a complex, ambivalent (let alone a favor-
ite) attitude toward kalam among Andalusian Jews, because this would
imply that the kalam may contain some grains of truth. An ambivalent
attitude may indicate that Jewish thinkers, both mutakallimun and oth-
ers, could choose and pick their ideas, from kalam as from Aristotelian
philosophy, in a considered way. Such a considered choice has no place
in Maimonides’ caricature of the kalam: for him, the Jewish mutakallim
is an automaton who imitates Muslim kalam, where logic becomes a tool
for the politician to manipulate the ignorant masses, as it had been for
the Christians mutakallimun before him.
The sharp dichotomy that Maimonides attempts to draw between ka-
lam and philosophy is important for him not only in order to have a
neat picture of who is a mutakallim; just as important is the fact that it
serves him also in his attempt to present a purist ideal of the phi loso-
pher. Maimonides’ disciple, Joseph Ibn Shimon, was an aspiring phi-
(^40) Guide 1.71 (Dalala, 122; Pines, 177).
(^41) See, for example, Ibn Rushd, Talkhis al-athar al-ulwiyya, ed. Jamal al- Din al-Alawi.
(Beirut, 1994), 103– 4.
(^42) See H. Ben- Shammai, “Some Genizah Fragements on the Duty of the Nations to Keep the
Mosaic Law,” in J. Blau and S. C. Reif, eds., Geniza Research after Ninety Years: the Case
of Judaeo- Arabic (Cambridge, 1992), 22; I. Sabra, “The Andalusian Revolt Against Ptole-
maic Astronomy: Averroes and al- Bitruji,” in E. Mendelsohn, ed., Transformation and
Tradition in the Sciences, Essays in Honor of I. Bernard Cohen (Cambridge, Mass., 1984),
133–53. Ibn Rushd also testifi es to the absence of Mutazilite writings in al- Andalus; see
al-Kashfan manahij al- adilla fiaqaid al- milla, ed. M. A, al- Jababiri (Beirut, 2001), 118.