Almohad-Era Jewish Jurisprudence: Moses Maimonides and Joseph Ibn ʿAqnīn

Abstract

Sarah Stroumsa’s 2009 Maimonides in his World spurred much reconsideration of Almohad influence on medieval Jewish thought. Many now accept that Almohad ideology was at least one crucible in which Moses Maimonides’s thought was forged. This paper broadens exploration of Almohad influences to include Maimonides’s understudied contemporary Joseph ben Judah Ibn ʿAqnīn. It focuses on the jurisprudential theories propounded by these two thinkers in order to evaluate the extent to which their views can be considered distinctively Almohad. Assessment of medieval Jewish legal theory in light of earlier Andalusian and developing Almohad thought allows for a fine-grained level of analysis, pinpointing when Jews endorsed Almohad ideas and when they ratified claims of other schools of Islamic law. In the end, at least on questions of jurisprudence, Maimonides and Ibn ʿAqnīn must be understood within several overlapping and mutually reinforcing traditions, namely, Andalusian Rabbanism, reformed Mālikism, and early Almohadism.