Maimonides
Sephardic Jewish philosopher, jurist and physician (1138–1204), born Moses ben Maimon in Córdoba during the height of al-Andalus's cultural splendour, forced to flee with his family from intolerant Almohad rule at the age of thirteen, beginning a long journey through Morocco and Palestine before finally settling in Fustat, near Cairo, where he served as physician to the court of Saladin and his son, and as spiritual leader (nagid) of the Egyptian Jewish community. He is regarded by the vast majority of Jewish tradition as the greatest rabbinic and philosophical authority since Talmudic times, summed up in the adage 'from Moses to Moses, there arose none like Moses'. His Mishneh Torah, written in clear, systematic Mishnaic Hebrew over ten years, codified the entirety of Jewish law for the first time —the 613 commandments and their detailed practical application— into a complete and orderly work in fourteen books, removing the need to consult the vast, scattered Talmudic corpus; its legal authority has been debated ever since but never ignored. His philosophical masterpiece, The Guide for the Perplexed (written in Judeo-Arabic), addresses believers trained in Aristotelian philosophy who felt torn between reason and revelation, and attempts to reconcile them by showing that the Torah, correctly interpreted —often allegorically— does not contradict philosophical truth but confirms it; in it he develops a radical negative theology (we cannot say what God is, only what God is not) and a sophisticated defence of the creation of the world against the Aristotelian eternity of the cosmos. Also the author of influential medical treatises and of the thirteen principles of faith still recited today in Jewish liturgy, his influence transcended Judaism: Thomas Aquinas read and cited him with respect, and his synthesis of faith and reason profoundly shaped all of medieval scholastic philosophy.