MAIMON'IDES, or rather MOSES BEN MAIMOIsT (RAMBAM=RABBI MOSES BEN MAI MON) B. JOSEPH B. ISAAC B. JOSEPH B. °HAWAII, etc.; Arab. ABEN AMRAN (LIMO 31-usa Inx ABDALLAH IEN MAIMON AL-lion-roar, was b. at Cordova, Mar. 30, 1135. Little is known of his early life, which fell in the troublous period of the Isloravide rulers. His iirst instruction he received at the hand of his father, himself a learned man, and author of several important works in Arabic and Hebrew. Under the guid ance of the most distinguished Arable masters of the time, 3Iaimonides then devoted himself to the study of Greek (Aristotelian) philosophy, the science of medicine, and theology. When, in 1148, Abd-al-Murnen, the successor of Abdallah, in the newly established reign of the AI-Mohads (Unitarians), took Cordova, and, shortly afterwards, subjected all Andalusia, both Jews and Christians residing there were forced either to profess Islam or to emigrate. Maimonides's family, however, together with many others to whom emigmtion was well-nigh impossible, outwardly embraced the 3Iohamtnedan faith, or rather for the time being renounced the public profession of Judaism, all the -while remaining faithful to it in secret, and keeping up a close communication with their co-religionists abroad, an arrangement in which the government readily acquiesced, since it fully answered their purpose. For more than 16 years Maimonides thus lived together with his whole family under the assumed character of Mohammedans; but when the death of the reigning sovereign brought no change in the system of religious Intolerance, they resolved to emigrate. In 1165 they embarked, went to Acco, and, by way of Jerusalem, to Cairo, where Maimonides's father died. Maimonides settled in rostra (Old Cairo), where for some time he gained his livelihood by the jewel-trade, until his great medical knowledge procured him the high office of physician to Salah Eddin, the reigning sultan of Egypt. Maimonides's importance for the religion and science of Judaism, and his influence upon their development, is so gigantic, that he has rightly been placed second to .Moses, the great law-giver, himself. He first of all brought order into those almost boundless receptacles of tradition, and the discussions and decisions to which they had given rise, which, without the remotest attempt at system .or method, lie scattered up and down the works of Haggada and Halacha—Midrash, Mishnah, Talmuds. Imbued with the spirit of lucid Greek speculation, and the pre cision of logical thought of the Arabic Peripatetics Maimonides, aided by an enormous knowledge, became the founder of rational Scriptural exegesis. The Bible, and all its written as well as implied precepts. he endeavored to explain by the light of reason, with which, as the highest divine gift in man, nothing really divine could, according to _his theory, stand in real contradiction. The miracles themselves, though not always traceable to their immediate cause, yet cannot be wrought in opposition to the physical and everlasting laws in nature. Where literal interpretation seems to jar upon the feel ings of reverential awe towards the Highest Being, there an allegorical explanation is to be adopted unhesitatingly. Respecting Maimonides's philosophical system, we can barely hint in this place at its close similarity with that of Averroes; both drawing ffoin the same classical sources, and arriving independently, and with individual modifica tions, to nearly the same views on the great problems of the universe. Holding reason in man—if properly developed and tutored by divine revelation—to be the great touch .stone for the right or wrong of individual deeds, Maimonides fully allows the freedom of will, and while he urges the necessity, nay, the merit of listening, to a certain degree, -to the promptings of nature, he rigorously condemns a life of idle aketicism, and dreamy, Albeit pious contemplation. No less is it, according to him, right and praiseworthy to pay the utmost attention to the healthy and vigorous development of the body and the, care of its preservation by the closest application to hygienic rules. Providence, Mai monides holds, reigns in a certain—broad—manner over humanity, and holds the sway over the destinies of nations; but lie utterly denies its working in the single event that may befall the individual, who, subject above all to the great physical laws, must learn to understand and obey them, and to shape his mode of life and action in accordance with existing- conditions and circumstances—the study of natural science and medicine. being therefore a thing almost of necessity to everybody. The soul, and the soul only, is immortal, and the reward of virtue consists in its—strictly unbodily—bliss in a world to come; while the punishment of vice is the "loss of the soul." 3Iaimonides's first work of paramount import (several of his earlier minor writings. treat of subjects of general science), begun in his twenty-third year, and finished ten years later, is his Arabic commentary of the 'Mishnah [translated in Hebrew by Judah Alcharisi, Tibbon (father and son), Salben Jacob, Net, Almali, Jak. Akkasi, and others],
which forms an extensive historical introduction to Tradition, or the Oral Law; tracing its. development, its divisions, the plan of the 'Mishnah, and its complements, etc.; and this introduction has now, for more than live hundred years, been deerned so esseutial a part of the Talmud itself, that no edition of the latter is considered complete without it. This was followed by the Sefer Hammizwoth, or Book of the Precepts, in Arabic (trans lated into Hebrew by Abr. Ibn Chasdai, and, from the author's second edition, by Moses Tibbon), which contains an enumeration of the 613 traditional laws of the Halacha, together with 14 canons on the principle of numbering them, chiefly directed against the authors of certain liturgical pieces called Aeharoth (Warnings); besides 13 articles of belief, and a psychological fragment. This book is to be considered chiefly as an intro duction to the gigantic work which followed in 1180, under the title of Mishne l'horalt (Second Law), or Yad Chasakall (Strong Hand), a Hebrew compendium in 982 chapters, embracing the entire Halacha, even those of its parts no lorwer in practical use, such as precepts regarding the soil of Judma and the like, and which7 with the most astounding minuteness, lucidity, and precision, places the results of the legal disquisitions gathered from the Talmudical labyrinths systematically arrang,ed before the reader. The summit of his renown, however, Maimonides reached in Ins grand Arabic work, Delalath Al Hairin (Heb. Moreli Nebuchim, " Guide of the Erring"), a philosophical exegesis (trans lated into Hebrew by Samual Tibbon, edited for the first time in the original by Munk,. 1856, etc.), which, while on the one hand it has contributed more than any other work to the progress of rational development in Judaism, has on the other hand also become. the arena for a long and bitter fight between orthodoxy and science—earrying out, as it did, to its last consequences the broad principle, that " the Bible must be explained I metaphorically by established fundamental truths in accordance with rational con clusions." So bitter, indeed, was the contest which broke out between the subsequent spiritualistic Maimonklian and the "literal Talmudistic" schools, that the fierce invec tives were speedily followed by anathemas and counter-anathemas issued by both camps; and finally, about the middle of the 13th c., the decision was transferred into the hands. of the Christian authorities, who commenced by burning Malmonides's books, continued by bringing to the stake all Hebrew books on which they could lay their hands, and followed this decision up by a wholesale slaughter of thousands upon thousands of Jews, men, women, and children, irrespective of their philosophical views. Under these cir cumstances, the antagonistic parties, chiefly through the influence of David Kimchi and others, came to a reconciliation, and withdrew their mutual anathemas; and, as time wore on, Maimonides's name became the pride and glory of the nation, who bestowed upon him t,erms like the " Great Eagle, the "Light of Two Worlds," etc. Nor was his immense celebrity confined to the narrow pale of his own creed; as early as the 13th c. already, portions of his works, chiefly the ilforeh (Doctor Perplexorum), became, in Latin versions, the text-books of European universities.
Maimonides himself only witnessed the beginning of the conflict, the proportions and violence of which lie certainly never anticipated. At his death. which took place Dec. 13, 1204, the grief at the loss of the " Light of the Age" was universal in the east as well as in the west. And he has ever since been recognized universally as one of the noblest and grandest men of all times: gifted with the most powerful and brilliant quali ties of mind, possessed of the most varied and astounding knowledge, and imbued with deep piety and true religion, borne aloft by undaunted energy and glowing zeal. His.
i body was brought to Tiberias, and his tomb became a place of pilgritnage, even to his early foes.
I Of Maimonides's stnaller works, We may enumerate, in conclusion, a translation of I Avicenna.'s Canon; an extract from Galen; several medical, mathematical, logical, and other treatises, spoken of with the highest praise by Arabic writers; legal decisions. theological disquisitions, etc. Portions of his ,,crreat work, _Vomit, have lately been translated into modern European languages, chiefly into German (Scheyer) and French (Munk).
MAIN' (from the Latin magnue, great), the name applied on shipboard to the principal ',past, and to all the parts belonging or adjacent to it--as, maintopmast, main-yard. main-stay, main-slirouds, main-hateliway, Main-chains, etc.