The Birth of Maimonides and the Years of Wandering

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon was born in Cordoba around 4898, son of a communal judge. He was ten when the Almohads, Berber zealots, took Spain and offered Jews and Christians a simple choice: Islam, exile or death. The Golden Age ended in a single year. The family left Cordoba, wandered the south for nearly a decade, moved to Fez in Morocco — where matters were no better — and then sailed to the Land of Israel.

Maimonides recorded the crossing: a storm on the fifth day, a vow to fast on that date for life, landing at Acre, going up to Jerusalem to pray at the Temple site, and travelling to the cave of Machpelah. Life in a land ruined by the Crusaders was impossible, and the family moved on to Fustat, near Cairo.

There disaster struck: his brother David, the merchant whose earnings supported them all, drowned in the Indian Ocean with their fortune. Maimonides lay ill for a year. Recovering, he turned to medicine and became physician to Saladin's vizier. He described his day in a letter: at the palace from dawn, home by evening to a waiting room full of patients, and only at night, Torah.

At twenty-three he had begun his Commentary on the Mishnah, finishing at thirty; it contains the Eight Chapters and the Thirteen Principles of Faith.