ism was the acceptable cosmopolitan position, defended by declaring that the
religious masses could never understand it, these militant Aristoteleans now
also tried to take over some of the territory of the scriptural faith. In both the
Jewish and Muslim camps there had been an upsurge of religious nationalism
against the older philosophical rationalisms. The philosophical innovators now
carved out a new position between the older camps, claiming to incorporate
the best of both. Ibn Tufayl, rather typical of the cosmopolitans, was also
ecumenical about religion. His ideal religious practice incorporates vegetarian-
ism, cleanliness, asceticism, and a respect for plants and animals, seemingly
taking over items from Persian and Hindu religion (de Boer, 1903: 186). Ibn
Daud and Maimonides, in contrast, want to defend the specific truths of the
Jewish scriptures, and Ibn Rushd does the same for the QurÁan.
Ibn Rushd proceeded by working on theology as well as on philosophy. He
defined the core theological beliefs^33 in such a way that his rational philosophy
would coincide with them. This was the same strategy pursued by the Jewish
philosophers closest to Aristotle. Ibn Daud, a generation earlier than both Ibn
Rushd and Maimonides, inaugurated the strategy, for instance, reading the
categories of Aristotle into Bible passages such as the Psalm 139th, or inter-
preting angels as secondary causes between God and the lower material spheres
(Husik, 1969: 198, 205, 221, 239). Ibn Daud’s main book was published in
1161, Ibn Rushd began his Aristotle commentary in 1169, and 1180 he used
the method of harmonizing religion with philosophy by finding the latter in
the QurÁan. Maimonides first acquired his reputation, perhaps before leaving
Spain (DSB, 1981: 9:28), by his masterly commentary on the rambling rab-
binical literature constituting the Mishnah; and he wrote a rabbinical code
which culled from this huge mass of precedents the items of faith as 13 in
number. Since medieval Judaism had no central authority or monopolistic
ecclesiastical organization, Maimonides owes his eminence to having provided
a famous, if controversial, systematization of the central items of faith. This
in turn gave him a base which he could harmonize with abstract philosophy.
This was the task of his later life, his Guide for the Perplexed, appearing in
1190.
Maimonides and Ibn Rushd are like most dominant intellectual figures in
that they stand out for the scope and depth of their work.They are energy
stars, filled with ambition to take on major tasks and the cultural capital and
emotional force to carry them through. Although following the path pioneered
by Ibn Daud, Maimonides overshadows him by the depth of his scriptural
studies and his philosophical thoroughness. Maimonides systematically ex-
pounds and refutes rival viewpoints, and he sets out his own arguments with
an abundance of proofs, along with scriptural references and etymological
interpretations to overcome literalism. Ibn Rushd has a similar fund of emo-
tional energy. He puts it into his massive commentaries on the whole corpus
Tensions of Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom^ •^443