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Maimonides’ Presentations of the Oral Torah in their Islamic Contexts

Tue, December 18, 2:30 to 4:00pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Backbay 1 Complex

Abstract

Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) has rightfully been described as “obsessed” with the Oral Torah, given his abiding concern to explain how the rabbis transmitted Jewish law and contributed to its development. In recent years, a number of scholars have turned their attention to how Maimonides drew upon ideas in circulation among Islamic jurists in order to explain the late antique rabbinic legal tradition. Building on the work of Sarah Stroumsa, Mordechai Cohen, and others, this paper argues that Maimonides exploited several trends then-current in Andalusian Mālikī jurisprudence, Almohad doctrine penned by Muḥammad Ibn Tūmart (d. 1130), and the ideas of Abū Ḥamid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), widely celebrated by twelfth-century Muslim jurists in al-Andalus. By focusing on Maimonides’ Judeo-Arabic writings, especially his depictions of rabbinic legal reasoning and the causes of rabbinic disagreement scattered throughout his Commentary on the Mishnah, this paper uncovers new Andalusian contexts of Maimonidean legal thought, embedding Maimonides’ timeless vision of Jewish law in a particular moment of Islamic legal history.

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