Three Arabic Terms in Maimonides’ BOOK OF THE COMMANDMENTS

• In Event: Jewish Law and Practice in the Medieval Islamic World

Abstract

Recent studies have highlighted the impact of Islamic legal theory on Maimonides’ BOOK OF THE COMMANDMENTS. In this paper, I investigate three Arabic legal terms (AṢL, FARʿ, and FIQH) that Maimonides used to differentiate the 613 “commandment-units” from the (biblical) details of the law and from rabbinic law. These terms formed the linguistic basis of Maimonides’ conceptualization of the central “individuation” problem at the heart of this work. A philological study of AṢL, FARʿ, and FIQH will help solve several enduring riddles about the BOOK OF THE COMMANDMENTS. What is the relationship of biblical and rabbinic law in Principle Two? Why did Maimonides include some details of the commandment-units and not others? What is the purpose of this virtually unprecedented book and its relationship to the MISHNEH TORAH? Maimonides’ exploitation of these terms also points to the bodies of knowledge that he drew upon. Building on Sarah Stroumsa’s methodological suggestions in her recent biography of Maimonides (MAIMONIDES IN HIS WORLD: PORTRAIT OF A MEDITERRANEAN THINKER [2009]), this paper demonstrates that Islamic legal theory constitutes a greater theoretical foundation for the BOOK OF THE COMMANDMENTS than heretofore appreciated. I will further argue that the application of terms from Islamic legal theory to the enumeration of the commandments is an example of “creative symbiosis” between Judaism and Islam.

author

• Marc Herman, University of Pennsylvania