Where did Maimonides grow up and live?

📍Calle de los Judíos 18, 14004 Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain

1138 – 1204

“I was born Moses ben Maimon on the 30th of March 1138 in Córdoba, the capital of Muslim-ruled Andalusia — one of the most intellectually alive cities in the medieval world, where Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars worked in productive proximity. I was thirteen when the Almohad invasion destroyed this world. My family fled and eventually settled in Cairo, where I became court physician to Saladin's vizier and leader of the Jewish community. The Guide for the Perplexed attempted to reconcile Jewish theology with Aristotelian philosophy. The Mishneh Torah systematised Jewish law. The Córdoba of my childhood — its libraries, its scholars, its synthesis — was the world I carried in my mind and tried to rebuild in my writing after its destruction.”

👍 LovedCórdoba's synthesis of traditions and the intellectual richness it produced. The Cairo community and the access to Saladin's court. The systematic mind that could hold philosophy and law simultaneously.

👎 DislikedThe Almohad invasion that ended the Córdoba world. The years of wandering before Cairo. The hostile reception from some Jewish communities to the philosophical approach.

Map showing where Maimonides lived — Calle de los Judíos 18, 14004 Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Maimonides's home at Calle de los Judíos 18, 14004 Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain

📍 Street view today

Sources: Kraemer, J. Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds (2008), Doubleday; Maimonides. The Guide for the Perplexed (1190, translated Shlomo Pines 1963)