Guide for the Perplexed

The list of Jewish scientists of the ninth century in Bagdad, Kufa & Basra, the great centers of Arabic learning of that era, reads like a Who's Who. They wrote unique treatises on medicine, astronomy, embryology, psychology & zoology. The interest by Jewish leaders in advancing medicine continued later on in Spain where we come across Hasda bin Shaprut (915-970) who acted as private physician to the Caliph 'Abd-al-Rahman III of Andalusia, at the capital city of Cordova. He, with the aid of a Byzantine monk, translated into Arabic, Dioscorides' work on botany, which later was extensively used in medieval Europe.

Medicine was part of the discipline of Jewish scholarship and most of the rabbis pursued the medical profession.

The most famous of the Hebrew physicians and philosophers of the whole Arabic epoch and the Middle Ages was Abu-'Imran Musa bin-Maymun
(Hebrew: Mosheh Ben-Maimon), known as Maimonides (1135-1204). He was an outstanding Talmudist and was equally at home in Arabic and Hebrew. His chief philosophic work is known as "Dalalat al-Ha'irin" (The Guide for the Perplexed), in which he endeavors to harmonize the philo-sophy of Aristotle with Judaism. Of him Cassaubenus writes, "He treats religiously matters of religion, philosophically all that pertains to philoso-
phy and divinely all that is G dly."

"The Guide for the Perplexed" has been translated innumerable times into Hebrew, Latin, German, Spanish and English. Both Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas lean so heavily on Gabirol & Maimonides that neither of them can be imagined without these two predecessors. All Maimonides' works with the except of the "Mishnah Torah," the gigantic religious code which summarizes the entire spiritual and intellectual content of the Talmud, were written in Judaeo-Arabic. To him we own much for injecting Aristotelian philosophies into the Western world.

Hence our main problem today are those totally ridiculous attacks on each other by extremely fanatic 'christians, moslims, jews' & some others) ...