From Our Madrid Correspondent
Madrid.
There are places on earth like eyes. They have more than a proportionate share in the light and in the fire. They hold, within a fragilt cup of space, journeys far beyond the physical scope of their flesh.
Cordoba, the city where the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, whose 800th birthday will be celebrated at the end of this month, is one of those places.
Cordoba is an eye within the face of Spain. Within Cordoba stands and speaks today the idea of Islam. The mosque is open though the Spaniards call it a Cathedral. Islam speaks and Cordoba answers.
Cordoba is proud. Its pride is intricate as the Talmud, hard and abstruse as the mystic creed of the Sufi, and open as a page of Aristotle.
Not by chance was Seneca the Stoic born here, and Averroes the Commentator, and Moses ben Maimon, the first rationalist of the Jews, and Lucan, and Spain’s modern poet, Luis de Congora.
Not by chance was this the home of the most perfect Arab knight, the quiet and strong Al-Mansur who ruled Spain and who decreed Sunday to be a day of rest in deference to the Christian slaves of Islam.
The Christian Copts brought their woman worship to Sevilla, whence came the first impetus toward the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Don Juan, autoerotic and fallen angel, is of Sevilla. The gypsies found haven in Granda for their Black Sea spells, whence sprang the aesthetic sadism of Spain.
Cordoba forbids such.
Here grew to be a kingdom of balance and of peace. Within a hundred years of its conquest, Islam forgot conquest and sought peace with Christian Europe.
The Califate of Cordoba became the seat of urbane monarchs who collected pagan and Christian songs from the Bay of Biscay, who collaborated with the Jews to bring the schools of Babylon northward, who founded the autonomy of science and of speculation 700 years before the recanting of Galileo.
The Cordoban spirit is Reason and Balance. It is in the Mosque. It is in the streets whose sumptuous palaces raise unassertive the homes of the poor. It is in the walls beside inns and convents and Juderia, the mediaeval quarter of the Jews, where the houses cluster as in reticent prayer about the transformed synagogues and hide patios of shade and brilliant color. It is in the wider, modern streets: the camerero at your cafe suggests it, waiting on you with unservile skill and then sitting at the next table with his cigarette, like any caballero, until another customer calls for his attention.
The summer night of Cordoba is cool as wisdom: its balance against day is delicious, like that of Seneca the Stoic, of Averroes the Moslem, of Maimonides the Jew, against the fever of life.
As the sun falls and is hidden behind the roofs that have been placed to take it, the town wakes.
Day is often fiery night on Cordoba.
The good folk have retired to their beds; the houses have been swathed in blinds and canopies to keep this white night out.
Now, the awnings are drawn back from across patio and narrow streets. Windows open; air from the world is permitted to touch the shut inner courts where geese patter and women seat themselves at looms, and children, dripping from their deep sleep-journey into the sea of self, sing and play and send sprays of laughter against the cooling walls.
The Spanish Government has published a decree providing for the celebration, with official honors, of the 800th anniversary of the birth of Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, best known as Maimonides, who was born in Cordoba in March, 1135, and died in Cairo in December, 1204.
Maimonides, philosopher, astronomer, physician and Talmudist, was the first great scholar to attempt a reconciliation between religion and science. To Jews he is the “Second Moses.” In Christian Spain he is “the Great Cordoban, the Glory of Spain and Israel.” In Arabic literature he is famed as Abu Imran Musa Ben Maimon Ibn Abd Allah.
He was only thirteen when Cordoba fell in 1148 into the hands of the fanatical Almohades and all the Jews there were compelled to choose between Islam and exile, Maimon’s family chose exile, and for twelve years led a nomadic life wandering hither and thither in Spain.
In 1160 they settled at Fez, where for some time the family passed as Moslems, until enquiries were made into their religious belief and they left and settled in Cairo. Maimonides became a famous physician and was appointed personal physician to Saladin’s Vizier, who recommended him to the Royal Family. According to Arab histories he was invited by King Richard I of England to become his personal physician but refused.
Besides a great number of works written mainly in Arabic and partly in Hebrew on medicine, theology, astronomy and philosophy, Maimonides is the author of the “Mishna Torah,” a codification of Biblical and Talmudic law, “The Strong Hand” and “A Guide for the Perplexed,” in which he attempted to reconcile the Bible and Jewish theology with science and Aristotle’s philosophy.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
