As Physician

Maimonides was probably first taught medicine by his father, but, as stated above, during the seven years which his family spent in Fez, Maimonides probably had the opportunity to pursue his medical studies and mingle with well-known physicians. In his "Treatise on Asthma" he describes discussions with the Jewish physician Abu Yusuf ben Mu'allim and with Muhammad, son of the famous Avenzoar, and others. From his commentary on drugs it may also be concluded that he received his basic medical education in Morocco. He refers to "our physicians in the West" and to Morocco and Spain. Most of the names of drugs are given there not only in Arabic but also in Berber and Spanish. The only authors quoted by name are Spanish-Moroccan physicians (Ibn Juljul, Ibn Wafid, Ibn Samajun), who lived one to two centuries before him, and his older contemporary al-Ghafiqi. Maimonides was certainly very familiar with Arabic translations of the writings of Greek physicians as well as with the writings of the older Arab physicians, for he himself condensed some of them.

That Maimonides was highly regarded as a physician among the Muslims is evident from the statements of the historians Ibn al-Qifti (c. 1248) and Ibn Abi U\aybia (c. 1270) as well as of the physician Abd-al-Latif of Baghdad, who visited Maimonides when he was in Cairo in 1201. A song of praise which was written by a grateful patient, Said ben Sana$ al-Mulk, has been preserved by Ibn Abi U\aybia:

Galen's art heals only the body

But Abu-Amran's [Maimonides'] the body and the soul.

His knowledge made him the physician of the century.

He could heal with his wisdom the sickness of ignorance.

If the moon would submit to his art,

He would free her of the spots at the time of full moon,

Would deliver her of her periodic defects,

And at the time of her conjunction save her from waning.

(Translation taken from B. L. Gordon, Medieval and Renaissance Medicine (1959), 235.)

Moreover, from certain statements made by Ibn Abi U\aybia, it is clear to us that Maimonides also lectured on medicine and taught disciples such as his own son Abraham, as well as Joseph ben Judah ibn Shamun, and Rashid al-Din.

Maimonidean controversy

The Maimonidean Controversy is a vast complex of disputed cultural, religious, and social problems, focusing around several central themes. Some of the elements of this controversy considerably antedate Maimonides (1135–1204), and of the questions brought into sharp relief by his ideas and writings, some have remained topical in many Jewish circles. Vast fields of human experience and thought are encompassed by it: reason and philosophy in their relation to faith and tradition, what components are permitted and what prohibited in the education of a man following the Torah, the proper understanding of anthropomorphism as expressed in the Bible and Talmud, central theological concepts such as the resurrection of the body, and the very form of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah and its attitude toward Talmudic discussion. The question of hierarchical leadership versus intellectual, personal leadership was one of the early causes of this controversy. In the Middle Ages the controversy had three climaxes: around 1180 (in the lifetime of Maimonides), around 1230–32 (involving David Kimhi, Solomon ben Abraham of Montpellier, Nachmanides and others, and centering in Provence), and around 1300–06 (in connection with Abba Mari ben Moses Astruc, Solomon ben Abraham Adret, Asher ben Yechiel, Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi (ha-Penini), and Menachem ben Solomon Meiri, and centering in Christian Spain and Provence).

In between these moments when the conflict flared up anew, tensions and disputes continued. The crisis of Spanish Jewry in the 15th century accentuated the main educational and social themes of the old controversy. In Renaissance Italy and in the diversified and flourishing Jewish center of Poland-Lithuania the old quarrel again became topical, though in a milder form. With the enlightenment (Haskalah) of the 18th century the "Maimonidean side" of the controversy was given a new, greatly secularized, and radical expression by Moses Mendelssohn and his followers — an expression that could scarely have been imagined by the former protagonists. In German neo-Orthodoxy, the "Maimonidean side" — particularly in its striving for a synthesis of Jewish faith and "general culture," as well as in certain of its social tendencies—found a new, conservative expression. In Yemen in the 19th century and well into the 20th, there was a distinct "Maimonidean camp" and a struggle against it.