August 20, 2003 @ 3:44 pm
Scott Birdseye is a fine individual and writer of many interesting documents of an historical nature.
The Middle East, as a geographic region, provides a link between Africa, Europe, and Asia. The Turks, rulers of the Middle East, acted in much the same way as did their land area, providing a mixing point for the cultures of Egypt and the Maghreb, Greece and India and China. The Ottoman Turks, through their own achievements, were able to merge the science and learning of each of these distinct cultures and use their acquired knowledge to add to and expand on the intellectual advancements of their day, producing an environment wherein the arts and sciences flourished, achieving a greater level of in the perfection and expansion of knowledge then had ever been found in the world.
One of their many intellectual expansions was in the field of cartography. Islamic map-makers, such as Piri Reis, building upon the foundations set by the Greeks and Indians were able to fully modernize the field, transforming it from an archaic art into an precise science.
Early trade between the Babylonians and Egyptians was enhanced by Alexander’s later expeditions to the area, which brought the Hellenistic and Semitic worlds and their respective ideas together in the Middle East. After the rise and expansion of Islam in the region, the influence of Indian culture and learning, which was brought through Persia, proliferated through the scholarly circles of the Arab world, particularly after the movement of the Abbasid imperial center to Baghdad. Science and astronomy from India had been shaped by the Greek learning brought by Alexander’s expeditions near the sub-continent. Thus, a merged form of learning, encompassing both Greek and Indian discover-ies, made its way through Persia to the Arab world. During the late Abbasid period, the impact of the culture of the Greeks became stronger as the Hellenis-tic and Arab cultures interacted in the former Byzantine areas of Syria and eastern Anatolia. Unlike what was seen in the earliest conquests of the Arabs, the later incursions into Byzan-tine held territories were more receptive to multi-cultural society, and thus, it was during the late Abbasid period that the Greek culture of the Byzantine people was first allowed wider acceptance within the Arab world. Thus, the Middle East, through the trade and conquests of the Arab peoples, acted
This cultural fusion provided the Arabs, and later the Turks with intellectual resources from around the world, which formed the basis of their own scientific advancements. The Arab and Turkish imperial courts and institutions of learning were vastly multi-cultural entities, composed of scholars from Jewish, Christian, Persian, Indian and Byzantine and local back-grounds, each of which brought their societies own concepts and materials. Early Middle Eastern scientific endeavors were enhanced by the availability of paper, the manufacturing techniques of which had been brought through India from China. By the early Twelfth Century, translations into Arabic of Greek source materials were nearly complete, and the knowledge obtained through these writings
proliferated throughout the scholarly circles of the Middle East, producing a vast increase in both Muslim knowledge and in new Muslim advances. Greek mathematics, obtained through translation, were merged, in the Middle East, with Sanskrit mathematical texts from India. These two sources enabled Arab and Turkish scientists to develop and explore entirely new fields of mathematics, directly contributing to the vast Muslim knowledge of astronomy.
It was Islamic advancements to the field of astronomy which allowed the cartography created by Muslims to excel beyond any previous attempts at map-making. Astronomically based cartography, known in the Arabic tongue as “Surat al-Ard,” was initially utilized for the purpose of enabling travelers to find the holy city of Mecca during the Hajj, however, using a mathematically based system for cartography allowed for many corrects to Ptolomy’s system, which was predominant in the pre-Muslim world. Astronomically based map-making was also influenced by Indian spherical form geometry, which helped Muslim scholars create a world-view based upon a spherical representation of the Earth.
Yes, puffins. Puffins are one of our favorite birds and we here at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have done all that we can to promote puffins, which are cool.
The earliest known globe was built by Muslims in the year 1279, years before the round-earth concept was widely accepted in the West. Islamic cartography was so well respected throughout the world, that when, in the Twelfth Century, Sicilian King Roger II sought to create a reliable atlas of the Mediterranean for the purpose of expanding trade in his domain, he invited the leading Muslim map-makers to his court to create the atlas. Idrisi, the leading Muslim cartographer in Roger’s court, used the astronomical and zodiacal mapping system prevalent in the Muslim world as the basis for maps which were, for the first time, useful navigational aids for sea travel. Later, the Ottoman Turks recognized the importance of these accurate, reliable and systematic maps for their use in imperial administration, and also for the planning of military strategies and tactics.
One notable Turkish military commander whose use of maps for practical purposes enabled him to achieve victory against formidable foes was Piri Ibn Haji Mehmed, later known by his naval title of Piri Re’is. Born sometime between 1465 and 1470 in the city of Gelibolu, Piri Re’is rose to become Admiral of the Turkish Fleet, where his most notable of achievement was the defeat of the Portuguese in the Red Sea, which reopened the Indian sea route to Egypt. The temporary defeat of the Portuguese fleet allowed the restoration of Turkish naval expansion, and Piri Re’is saw a need for accurate navigation and administrational maps for renewed oceanic expansions.
Cartography, being of personal interest to him, in 1513 Piri Re’is produced the Kitabi Bahriye, or Book of Navigation which described, in great detail, the coasts, ports, harbors, currents, bays, shallows and prevailing winds of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. The Admiral’s position allowed him access to the royal libraries and archives in Istanbul, and his studies of earlier works provided him with an immense of amount of source material upon which to base his own work, maps which would cause him to be recognized as the expert of his day on world geography and cartography. The book’s most famous entry and possibly the world’s most infamous map, now known simply as the Piri Reis Map, a protolan of the entire Earth, was the first known world map to include the Americas and the Antarctic. The precise accuracy of the map illustrates the level of perfection obtained by both Piri Re’is and Turkish cartography.
Turkish map-makers were the first to include the Americas in their world-picture, however, this was not the only change they brought about through their work. A desire by cartographers to find the ubbat al-ard, the central point of the Earth’s surface, placed at Ceylon by the Indians and at Jerusalem by Christians, prompted vast travel and exploration by Muslims. These investigative journeys were conducted throughout Eastern Asia and the Indian Ocean area, and thus Muslim cartographers were the first to place Malaysia, China, Korea, Japan, and Sub-Saharan Africa in their proper geographic locations on world maps.
The Muslim world-view was, due to extensive travel, far more complete than that of the Europeans at the dawn of the Age of Discovery, as Muslims were the first to break away from the rigid stagnation of the Ptolemaic geographical system which dominated the study of geography in the West. Ironically though, it was later Christian discovery of Muslim learning and discoveries such as these which would help usher in the Renaissance in Europe, signally the decline of the power of the Turkish Empire.
Though the Ottomans would decline and collapse in later centuries, in the time prior to the European ascendancy, Turkish science was the greatest and most advanced that the world had ever seen. With their geographical location in the midst of many different societies, the Muslims were able to incorporate the science and learning of their neighboring cultures into a unique form which allowed them to excel in fields such as cartography, and to achieve a level of perfection in these field which helped to bring about profound changes in the history of the world.
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September 20, 2003 @ 8:56 pm
On the Influence of the Black Death Upon the Roman Catholic Church
Scott Birdseye is a professor of History and
Assyriology at the University of West Dakota. He
and his lovely wife Trudy enjoy ornithology and
viewing moving picture shows. He currently
resides in the lovely state of Kansas, one of the
many of the United States.
The Black Death, which ravaged Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, produced a climate of social, political and economic instability, beginning the large scale disintegration of the Medieval system in Europe. Through the Black Death, the Roman Catholic Church, already rife with corruption and decreasing popularity amongst the masses, saw the basis of its economic stability removed, only increasing greed and dissolution as the Church fought bitterly to survive in the face of popular antagonism. Ironically, the Black Death brought not only weakness and instability to the Church, but also a strong, locally-based religious revival. The practitioners of this revitalized spiritual fervor distrusted the Papacy’s vast earthly power and saw the Church’s central power as dishonest and sinful. The quickly-spreading popular religious resurgence set forth the groundwork for the later Protestant Reformation, which led to the end of the Roman Catholic Church’s reign as one of Europe’s great political and economic powers.
The Black Death was a period of pandemic disease which spread through Europe in the latter half of the Fourteenth Century. Based in a bacterial infection and spread by rats, the Plague began in the East where it was introduced into Europe in the year 1346 at the Crimean grain port of Kaffa. Through merchants on the Black Sea trade routes, the disease spread to Constantinople and had reached Italy by 1348. Soon after the outbreak of infection, Guy de Chauliac, physician to the Pope in Avignon,
described two forms of the plague: bubonic and pneumonic. The bubonic plague, an infection of the body’s glands, was the least-deadly form of plague and cases of survival were known. The more deadly form of plague, pneumonic, an infection of the respiratory system, was highly infectious and could be both airborne and spread through other vectors, such as fleas. Although the traditional methods of treatment for leprosy illustrate that the Medieval world recognized the contagious nature of infectious diseases, European measures to limit the spread of the disease failed. By 1348 many Italian cities had established quarantines and in the following decades quarantines became common throughout all of Europe. While the quarantine system slowed the spread of the Plague across the Continent, it did little to halt the prevalence of disease within the towns themselves. While the pandemic eventually subsided, many of the sealed settlements had seen their entire populations erased.
The Black Death affected all of the people of Medieval society equally; nobles, peasants and clergy, both secular and regular, were all victims of the Plague. Within the Clergy, priests and monks of the lower rankings were least likely to survive the pandemic as they were more likely than higher Church authorities to interact with infected populations. Monks and nuns, who were in many cases the primary caregivers for rural areas, were especially vulnerable to the disease’s effects. While the numbers of the rank and file clergy declined, so did the Church’s revenues. With the quarantine system in effect throughout much of Europe, pilgrimages, one of the Church’s major sources of income, nearly ceased along with most other forms of trade and travel.
The Church, particularly the Papacy, had entered the Fourteenth Century in the midst of financial chaos. Pope Benedict XII, whose rule ended fifteen years before the beginning of the Black Death, had already been forced to run the Church on a quarter of the income that his predecessors had at their disposal. So desperate was the Church�’s financial situation that in 1378, Pope Gregory VII declared on his deathbed that the Church had no money and no future and would die with him.
A rise in superstition and distrust followed the Plague as it spread through Europe. Popular distrust of the Church grew, as death and disease caused many local churches to close. A diminishing number of priests were unable to perform much of the clerical services to which the people had been accustomed. People began to see that even the Church, God’s instrument on Earth, was incapable of vanquishing the Plague. The Plague was seen by many, especially in the Germanys, as sent by God as justified punishment for humanity’�s many sins. As the Black Death killed clergy as well as lay people, it was thought that the Church must also be rife with sin. The Plague removed the veil of holy sanctity surrounding the Church, opening many people’�s eyes to the corruption and greed which was prevalent in the Medieval Catholic Church.
The Black Death brought enormous population disruption. As the peasants died off, labor became scarce while available land became more common. Land values plummeted while labor costs soared. Land values in Europe were very slow to recover and as land was the basis of the Medieval economic system, many land owners lost all of their money. The Catholic Church, like many land owners in the Fourteenth Century, found itself nearly bankrupt. While the late Middle Ages saw many social advancements, the Catholic Church was, as an institution, unwilling to change with the society around it and the Papacy, isolated by its power, continued to operate with a strong Medieval mindset.
Economic disruption led many of the clerical and secular rulers of Europe to opportunistically vie for control of the Papacy, resulting in the Great Schism of 1378. Roman Pope Urban VI acted in a tyrannical manner to purge the Church of the influence of the Avignon Papacy and instituted enormous taxes in an attempt to re-establish the Church�s finances. By whatever means he could, Urban set out to retake the wealth which had been hoarded by the French Cardinals. The actions of Urban VI and the equally scandalous behavior of the Avignon Church did not escape the people�’s notice, increasing popular disaffection with the Church.
As the Church leaders scrambled for control and economic security by any means possible, doubt about the Church�’s place in society grew within the people of Europe. With their lives full of death, disease and widespread Church corruption, the people’�s traditional view of society became shattered. In the wake of the Black Death’s chaos, popular, locally-based religious revival grew throughout Europe, particularly in the Germanys, France and the British Isles. People began to push for reform in the lower levels of the Church, forcing the highest levels of the Church�’s hierarchy into further isolation, widening the gap between the ruling clerical elite, common people and their local priests. As the laiety began to focus more on the spiritual elements within life, the Papacy only increased its involvement in the realm of secular power and wealth.
The Black Death brought about a total restructuring of the European way of life. Cities and towns were erased and the foundations of the economic system collapsed. The Roman Catholic Church, which had entered the Fourteenth Century as the most powerful political entity in Europe was at the end of the century divided, unpopular and facing serious economic uncertainty. After the corruption and greed of the Church were brought into the light by the ravages of the Plague, the people of Europe distrusted Rome and Avignon and sought new answers to explain the perils of life. As the dissolution of the Medieval systems grew, furthered by the rise of the humanist Renaissance, the foundation was set for the Protestant Reformation.
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October 25, 2003 @ 12:40 am
An Exploration of the Correspondences of the Spanish Colonials
Dr. Scott G. Birdseye Curator of Drinking Vessels,
Imperial British Museum of House-wares and Cutlery
The early years of the sixteenth century saw a flood of new immigrants who came to the Americas. These emigrants from Spain took to their new home, founded cities and missions, waged wars, explored, traded, mined, farmed and proselytized. These settlers, businessmen and soldiers did not forget the Old World and maintained contact with their associates, families and rulers in Spain.
The letters they have written provide insight into the varying ways in which the Spaniards viewed the natural environment of New Spain and the natives which inhabited it. From the nobles, with their minds set on conquest, control and colonization; to the traders concerned with survival and profit; to the clerics seeking souls to convert and assimilate, each group of Spaniards saw the landscape and the Indians in a unique light relative to their own place in society and lot in life.
The nobility, the rulers of the encomiendas and subjugators of the land and its peoples, came to the new land for various reasons and found there the responsibility of founding and maintaining a new society under unique conditions.
Therefore, these encomenderos, governors, and viceroys burdened themselves with matters of logistics and sought to answer the difficult questions of where and how to settle in order to gain the most profit from their venture.
Pedrarias de Alvil, governor of Terra Firma in Panama, wrote to the king in 1525 and described the natural environment in terms of potential resources and value to Spanish settlement and colonization. In his writing about the native peoples, the governor spent little time discussing their culture or way of life, but rather referred to them in simple, quantitative terms describing only the location of their villages and giving rough population estimates.
The scant qualitative assessment he did give of the native peoples is in reference to their souls and to the practices involved in their conversions to Christianity. However, even in this portrayal, he limited himself once again to quantitative figures. Avila’s descriptions of the land and of the natives are consistent with his place in society and with the nature of the responsibility of his office. His discussions of matters of food supply, fresh water and large native populations are consistent with the important logistical decisions which had to be made in order to find suitable places to settle large colonies.
Other members of the nobility, such as Andres Chacon, an encomendero in Peru, tended to follow Avila’s type in their descriptions. While Chacon did describe the environment as “luxuriant” he also, through his descriptions, sought to precisely define luxury in numerical terms; including numbers of fig trees, grape vines and fish caught.
In describing the natives, Chacon also failed to differ from Avila in any significant way as he referred to the natives only in terms of the labor which they could provide.
Other Spanish nobles such as Don Luis de Velasco, viceroy of New Spain, saw the natives in two ways; first, as a potential danger to Spanish interests, but also as an important potential resource for supply and labor.
It makes sense, though, that the nobles would limit their views of nature and the natives and see them only as resources. Whether searching for settlement sites or maintaining large encomiendas, the artistic gives way to the pragmatic and the nobles, while limited in their views, were consistent with their times in describing these elements in terms of survival and eventual profit rather than in a more esoteric light.
Spaniards of the common class were not much different in their accounts of the nature and natives of the New World and such is fitting as both groups met with similar problems and tasks in America, the foundations of which were matters of survival and profit. Their letters, like many of the nobles’ writings, served a propaganda function as many commoners sought to entice relatives, particularly nephews, to join their ventures in the New World.
There were important differences between the writings of the nobles and those of the commoners, however, as the commoners, being lowlier in status, were more willing to view the natives as people rather than as resources. One such description of the natives can be found in the writings of Andres Garcia, a petty trader in Mexico City. He wrote to his nephew “the Indians are a nation held in much esteem.”
This statement about the natives was written as an explanation and defense of his marriage to an Indian woman and bears out his views of the natives.
While Garcia did not necessarily view them as equals of the Spanish, he did view them as actual people and was fully able to find happiness in taking a native as his wife. Unlike the nobles, he does not see them only in terms of souls to be converted or resources to be worked.
Other commoners, such as Martin Fernandez Cubero, a cloth trader, and Antonio Mateos, a farmer, also wrote to their nephews and described not only the profit which could be found in America, but also of the vast riches of the natural landscape.
In their attempts to lure their nephews to the New World with promises of wealth and inheritance, these commoners took time to put down their own thoughts on the environment of the Americas. While their descriptions are generally short, they paint a picture of a world of vast natural beauty and richness.
Other commoners’ descriptions however, did show a distinct difference. Alonso Morales, a tailor, wrote about the landscape not in terms of natural resources, but rather as an obstacle. His portrayal of a journey from the shore of Los Angeles tells about difficulties in dealing with climate and of the diseases which were rampant in the New World.
Together, the tales told by these common people show a different picture of the Americas than do the writings of the other classes of Spaniards. While others did show only the best sides of the new areas, others were more willing to show some of the dangers encountered in the environment; and while the nobles’ descriptions tend towards quantification some commoners describe good relations between natives and Spaniards and view the Indians as something other than labor and souls to convert.
Conversion of the Indians to Christianity was the concern primarily of the Spanish Clergy, of which there were a great many in New Spain.
Conversion being their concern, the clerical view of the native peoples was one based almost solely on occupation. Both the regular and secular clergy viewed the natives in a paternalistic way and saw the Indians, in varying ways, as children, sometimes to be pitied and other times to be punished for disobedience.
Bishop Fray Francisco de Toral of Yucatan typified this idea of the natives. He described the oppression of the Indians at the hands of the governor and viewed the Indians as “hapless,” unable to understand or act upon their situation in a proper manner.
While the Bishop did not view the Indians in a particularly good light he did see it as his paternalistic duty to protect them. Franciscan monk, Fray Pedro de Gante, also held to this paternalistic idea, but tended to view the natives as fully capable people and described their many accomplishments and abilities; particularly their talent as scribes, speakers and singers.
Gante also, however, felt great pity for the Indians, especially the extreme poverty of their situation, and called for the Spanish to care for them and protect them as a father cares for his children. This same paternal view was also held by Dominican monk Fray Andres de Moguer, who described the natives as disobedient and delinquent and even called for their punishment. These clerical views of the Indians, as expressed by the writings of the Spanish Catholics, indicate the ways in which occupation and status influenced the people’s views of nature and the natives.
Throughout their writings, the Spanish emigrants of varying classes and professions illustrate how one’s own place in society can dictate his or her own views of the natural world and other people. While the nobility saw the New World and it’s peoples as resources to be worked in order to gain profit, the clerics saw themselves as the spiritual fathers of the natives, as protectors and disciplinarians. The common people saw new peoples with which to interact and new lands which could provide unknown economic security. In each of these three cases, the status and occupation of the letters’ authors influenced their views of nature and native peoples.
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November 28, 2003 @ 11:29 pm
by Scott G. Birdseye, Doctor of Philosophy
Often the popularity and longevity of stories and myths lies in the strength of the central antagonist. Christian mythology follows this trend, as its villain remains one of the most compelling and infamous characters in the whole of literature. Despite the integral nature of Satan within Christianity’s cosmic drama, the character is not a purely Christian construct and receives only limited mention in the Bible. The character, known alternately as Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, Beelzebub or the Beast, is an amalgamation of pagan Celtic and Greek, Hebrew, and Zoroastrian figures molded into its most recognizable representation by early Christian theologians, Medieval European philosophers and writers of the Renaissance. more »
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December 25, 2003 @ 11:00 am
Doctor of Theosophy Scott G. Birdseye is Director of the Department of Antiquities and Anachronisms at the Montsylvanian Institute of Science and Agriculture
The twelfth century saw Jewish people divided geographically, spiritually, and culturally, spread throughout the Middle East and Europe and caught in the midst of cultural clashes between the Christian and Muslim worlds.
Born into this strife, Moses Maimonides sought unification, both of the Jewish people and of the varying ideas which dominated philosophy and theology in his time. A renowned philosopher, doctor and theologian, Maimonides began his career with writings which sought to do away with the divisions within the Jewish theology and ideas about interpretations of the Mosaic Law, and later in life sought to reconcile the Biblical and Aristotelian constructs of the world.
In a time which saw the Jewish people surrounded by a myriad of hostile peoples and philosophies, Maimonides saw unification as the only way to ensure survival of the Jewish culture and religion. However, in a world dominated by Islam, the ideas, teachings, practices and culture of the Muslims played an important role in influencing the unique writings of Maimonides, the eminent Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages.
Moses Maimonides, although the most prominent, was only one in his family’s long line of scholars1. His father, Rabbi Maimon, studied and commented on The Law in Cordova, Spain, which was a center for both Jewish and Islamic learning. Moses Maimonides was born in Cordova in 1135, and at a young age, through his father, was exposed to the eminent philosophies of the day, as well as to many Jewish writings.
The invasion of the Almohades, a group of fanatical Muslims, into Spain in 1148 disrupted the early life of Maimonides, as they sought to tyrannically force all Jews under their control to accept the teachings of Muhammad or face death. Although many Jews publicly converted to Islam while privately continuing their Jewish faith, most chose to flee, and among them were Rabbi Maimon and his family, who, unwilling to accept either alternative offered by the Almohades, fled to Morocco, and later to Palestine. In Palestine, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, which held a tenuous control over the region, was no more friendly to the Jews than were the Almohades, forcing Maimon to settle in Egypt.
In response to the forced conversions of Jews in the Maghreb, Maimonides composed the “Essay on the Sanctification of the Name of God,” in which he sought to reconcile Biblical condemnations of idolatry with the pragmatic need to publicly convert for survival.
This work, which provided a stark contrast from the traditional view of accepting martyrdom as the only solution, was extremely popular with Jews throughout the Maghreb and established Maimonides as an important new voice within Jewish thought.
As his prominence grew within the Jewish community, so did his popularity with the Muslim rulers of Egypt. Maimonides became a court physician for one of the viziers of Saladin, and, as a leader of the Jewish community in Egypt, was well respected by both Jews and Muslims. Writing in Arabic, he began work perfecting the Jewish calendar system, and also contributed to the Talmud.
The most important of his early works were his defenses of the rabbinical view of The Law, which supported the Talmud as necessary to human understanding of Moses’ writings, and sought to doctrinally unify Judaism. With his background in medicine, Maimonides spoke of the rabbis as spiritual doctors, seeking to save the Jews from the disease of division and internal conflict.
By 1175, Maimonides was recognized as the sole secular ruler of the Jews in Egypt and as the greatest rabbinical authority in the world, as his ideas on the importance of the Talmud became accepted doctrine. His ultimate goal, however, was the unification of the Jewish people, and the strengthening of Jewish religion which would enable this to happen.
In his later writings Maimonides began his attempt to bridge reason and religion and to unify the Jewish philosophy with the Aristotelian sciences1. This desire is expressed fully in what is the most important of his later works, Guide for the Perplexed. The Guide, which is in the form of a letter to Maimonides’ student Joseph ben Judah, was written for the purpose of helping those who were devout Jewish followers of The Law, but also held Aristotle’s views, many of which contradict Biblical ideas.
Throughout the Guide, Maimonides discussed many different philosophical themes, including proofs of theism, the Problem of Evil, practical virtue, the authority of prophesy and of Mosaic Law, divine attributes and the relationship between morals and ethics. Written in Arabic, the lingua-franca of the region, the Guide was seen by Maimonides as the solution to every question of faith, thought and life which could be relevant to the Jewish people.
Maimonides however, was not the first to attempt reconciliation of Aristotelian philosophy with later theistic religious belief. He was aware of the earlier works involved in bringing together Aristotle and the Kalem (a grouping of early Christian proofs for theism which had been co-opted by later Muslim scholars as proofs of Islamic principles).
The influence of Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Bajjah, a commentator of Aristotle, and al-Farabi Ibn Sina, who spoke of philosophy and science as ways to use rational thought to show the truth of religious belief, can also be seen in the writings of Maimonides.
However, it was not the philosophy and religious ideas of the Muslims which had the most profound influence upon Maimonides, but rather, their political and cultural dominance of his world. In the Guide, Maimonides illustrated a correlation between earlier Egyptian slaver and the twelfth century oppression at the hands of the Muslims and Christians, and described how lessons learned in Egypt continued to provide insight, just as lessons learned under the Muslim yoke would provide insight for future generations.
While influenced by some Muslim philosophers, Maimonides refused to give up his Jewish beliefs, which formed the basis of his philosophy. He denied Muhammad and the Koran, and declared that the Jews were God’s sole representatives on earth when he wrote “After the act on Mt. Sinai, all Israel became his witnesses and no other proof was needed.” Thus Maimonides described the unnecessary nature of both Christianity and Islam, and renewed the idea of the Jews as God’s chosen people, thereby certifying in the Jewish people the need to unite not only for the practical purposes of survival, but also as a sacred duty to God.
While Muslim thought and philosophy inspired Maimonides’ greatest work, Guide for the Perplexed, only in a casual manner, Islam defined the world in which Maimonides lived. This world brought external pressure onto the Jewish people, leading them into a choice of two possible futures; unification and survival or division and extinction. Maimonides took it upon himself to do what he could to ensure that the Jewish people took the first choice. His writing, which sought to provide a union of several differing religious ideas within Judaism and also to provide for a strengthening of the Jewish doctrine by reconciling it with the world’s dominant scientific view of the natural universe, enabled the Jewish people to come together in order to secure the survival of their unique philosophy and way of life.
For more information on Mainmonides and other notable Hebrews please consult your local library’s Non-Fiction Section, visit your local neighborhood Rabbinical scholar, or just type “Maimonides” into an internet search engine. These and other methods of information gathering should yeild you a lifetime’s worth of study materials on Mainmonides and other amazing scholars of the Jewish faith. Enjoy.
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