Moses Maimonides was born in Córdoba, in 1138, on an Iberian peninsula ruled by Muslims, and until his death in Cairo, in 1204, he always lived in an Arab-Islamic environment. He grew up in the shadow of the Reconquest in Spain and the Crusades in Palestine; so that his life, career and writings represent the highest expression of the intertwined worlds of Judaism and Islam. His monumental compendium of Jewish laws, the Mishneh Torah, served as the basis for the following Jewish legal codes and earned him recognition as one of the leading legislators of it. As a physician, he wrote works that were studied for centuries in Europe. As a philosopher and scientist, he contributed to the development of mathematics, astronomy, logic, ethics, and theology.

This comprehensive biography is both a faithful story of the life of Maimonides and an immersion in the exciting Mediterranean world of the 12th century. With academic rigor and informative delicacy, Joel Kramer resorts to original sources to recreate that period in history in which the encounter between Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions gave rise to an intense intellectual exchange and a stubborn religious struggle.