Workshop: A day in the life of Abraham Maimonides

On his father’s death in 1204, Abraham Maimonides became Head of the Jews in Egypt at the tender age of eighteen. Like his famous father, he practised medicine, and wrote works of Jewish philosophy.

What was it like to live as a medieval Nepo Baby, and how did Abraham deal with some serious challenges to his position and authority? How did his religious and scholarly interests – including an unlikely enthusiasm for Sufi mysticism – develop, and how were his attempted reforms received? 

At Cambridge University Library dozens of manuscripts from Abraham Maimonides and his circle are preserved in the Cairo Genizah collection – a huge cache of fragments from medieval Egypt. Ben Outhwaite and Melonie Schmierer-Lee will discuss new Maimonides discoveries from the collection and piece together what a day for one the busiest people in Egypt, Abraham son of Moses, might have been like.

This session is part of an interactive Alumni Festival workshop series organised by the Cambridge Interfaith Knowledge Hub.

Advance registration is essential.

Background to this event

The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library is a window on the medieval world and has been colourfully described as ‘a refuge for writings’ and ‘a battlefield of books’. Its 193,000 manuscript fragments, mainly in Hebrew, Judaeo-Arabic, Aramaic and Arabic, are an unparalleled resource for the academic study of Judaism, Jewish history and the wider economic and social history of the Mediterranean and Near East in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. The Genizah Research Unit was established in the 1970s to carry out a comprehensive program of conservation, cataloguing and research on the manuscripts.