Maimonides

Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides, was born about 1138 in Córdoba in Spain, then a meeting place of Islamic, Jewish and Christian culture. When he was ten, the zealous Almohads conquered Córdoba and demanded that Jews convert; his family went into exile, wandering through southern Spain and Morocco before settling at last near Cairo in Egypt. He became the leader of Egypt's Jewish community and physician to the vizier of Saladin, practising medicine by day and writing by night. He compiled a systematic code of Jewish law, and it was said of him that 'from Moses to Moses there arose none like Moses'; he is the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages.