Chapter Three
An Almohad “Fundamentalist”?
As a young adult, between the years 1148 and 1165, Maimonides
lived under Almohad rule. The im mense impact of these formative years
on his thought has been almost totally overlooked by modern scholar-
ship.^1 This chapter will investigate the permeation of his thought, both
halachic and philosophical, by Almohad doctrine.
AlmohadsIn 1148, Cordoba, Maimonides’ birthplace, was conquered by the Mu-
wahhidun (known in Latin as the Alomohads), a Berber dynasty that had
by then established its rule in North Africa. The found er of the move-
ment, Muhammad ibn Tumart (1078 [or 1081]– 1130) and his successor
and the actual found er of the dynasty, Abd al- Mumin (d. 1165), gained
political and military power and ousted the previous Berber dynasty, that
of the Murabitun (known in Latin as the Almoravids). Revivalist move-
ments aiming to restore Islam to its pristine purity, and to replace a pre-
vious (already corrupt) such movement, are a recurrent phenomenon in
Islam in general and in North Africa in par ticular. Sociologists, from Ibn
Khaldun (d. 1406) to Ernest Gellner (d. 2006), view the emergence of
such movements as a periodic cycle related to the mutual relations be-
tween nomad desert- dwellers and settled societies.^2 The Almohad move-
ment, however, was not merely yet another revivalist wave emerging
from the rough and remote regions to restore old mores and values in the
(^1) The possibility that Maimonides is indebted to the Almohads was already raised by I.
Heinemann, “Maimuni und die arabischen Einheitslehrer,” Monatschrift für Geschichte
und Wissenschaft des Judentums 79 (1935): 102– 48, esp. 147 ff. The specifi c infl uences
suggested by Heinemann, however, are improbable. Also improbable is the suggestion that
Maimonides was infl uenced by the Almohad aversion to poetry; see D. Urvoy, Pensers d’al-
Andalus. La vie intellectuelle à Séville et Cordoue au temps des empires berbères [fi n Xle
siècle–début XIIIe siècle] (Toulouse, 1990), 119. Maimonides was opposed to vocal and
musical entertainment, but he does not seem to have objected to poetry, and in fact had
written some himself; see Y. Yahalom, “ ‘Sayeth Tuviyyah ben Zidkiyyah’: The Maqama of
Joseph ben Simeon in Honor of Maimonides,” Tarbiz 66 (1997): 543– 77, esp. 552, 558– 60
[Hebrew]; but see note 39, below.
(^2) Cf. E. Gellner, “Flux and Refl ux in the Faith of Men,” Muslim Society (Cambridge, 1981),
1–85, esp. 46 (quoting Friedrich Engels).