author
Moses Maimonides
1135–1204
A towering medieval thinker, this rabbi, philosopher, and physician reshaped Jewish law and explored how faith and reason might speak to each other. His books, especially Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed, have been read and debated for centuries.
1 Audiobook
The guide for the perplexed
by Moses Maimonides
About the author
Born in Córdoba in 1135, Moses Maimonides grew up in a learned Jewish family and showed unusual intellectual range from an early age. After the Almohad conquest of Córdoba, his family was forced into a life of upheaval, eventually settling in Egypt, where he became a leading figure in Jewish communal life.
Maimonides wrote in both Arabic and Hebrew on law, philosophy, and medicine. His major works include the Commentary on the Mishna, the Mishneh Torah—a sweeping, systematic code of Jewish law—and The Guide for the Perplexed, a landmark work that tries to reconcile religious belief with philosophy and science.
He also gained renown as a physician, and later tradition remembers him as one of the great intellectual figures of medieval Judaism. His influence reached far beyond his own community: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readers all engaged with his ideas, and his writings still shape conversations about ethics, law, reason, and belief.