ABSTRACT
Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), the greatest philosopher of the twelfth century, was born in Cordova but when the Almohades came to power he and his family were forced to emigrate. After travelling through Spain and North Africa, Maimonides eventually settled in Cairo where he wrote numerous studies ranging from halakhah to philosophy. In his major philosophical treatise, The Guide for the Perplexed, he relied on the great Muslim expositors of Aristotle such as Avicenna and al-Farabi. For Maimonides reason and faith are harmoniously interrelated, and in this study he criticized various aspects of Mutazilite and Asharyite philosophy and attempted to reconcile the Torah with a number of central tenets of Aristotelianism.
