תּוֹלְדוֹת
Rabbi Maimon ben Rabbi Yosef HaDayan (c. 4870/1110 – c. 4930/1170) was a rishon of Spain, a dayan on the beit din of Cordoba, and is known above all as the father and first rebbi of the Rambam. He was born at Cordoba into a distinguished family of dayanim and communal heads, the seventh generation of dayanim in his line, and learned Torah from Rabbi Yosef ibn Migash of Lucena, himself a talmid of the Rif. He was an astronomer and mathematician as well, and served as dayan of Cordoba for many years, ruling in disputes and guiding the community.
The settled life of the Jews of Cordoba ended in 1148 when the Almohads took the city and set before them conversion, exile or death. Rabbi Maimon chose exile, and after some years of wandering through Spain the family reached Fez in Morocco about 1160, where Rabbi Yehudah HaKohen ibn Shoshan was living and from whom he wished his sons to learn. He found the community there in despair, holding that Heaven had abandoned them, and to raise them he wrote the Iggeret HaNechamah, his one complete work to reach us, written in Judeo-Arabic. In it he set out the foundations of emunah and how a Jew is to conduct himself, comparing the people in exile to a man sinking in water risen to his nostrils, with the Torah and its mitzvot the rope let down from Heaven that he must grasp even by his fingertips.
Following the public killing of Rabbi Yehudah HaKohen ibn Shoshan in 1165 the family fled North Africa by sea, reaching Acco in Iyar of that year, and afterwards visited the holy places at Yerushalayim and Chevron. He was niftar shortly after. He wrote in Judeo-Arabic a commentary on the Chumash following the plain sense of the pesukim, and works on the laws of the festivals and on practice, of which fragments survive.
במקום שהמסורות חלוקות. Accounts differ on where he was niftar: some place it in Yerushalayim, others hold he reached Egypt with his sons; a widely held tradition places his grave in Teveria beside his son. ; The sources place his passing between 1165 and 1170. ; The Hebrew and English sources tell the events at Fez differently, one placing his opposition to a man claiming prophecy there and his flight on that account.
רבי מיימון בר' יוסף הדיין היה רב ספרדי מתקופת הראשונים בימי הביניים ששימש כדיין בבית הדין של קורדובה. ידוע בעיקר בזכות בנו ותלמידו, הרמב"ם.
Rabbi Maimon ben Joseph HaDayan (c.1110–1166) was an exegete, moralist and dayyan from al-Andalus. He is best known as the father of Maimonides. His teacher was the respected scholar Joseph ibn Migash. He authored a commentary, in Arabic, on the Pentateuch, and also wrote on Jewish ritual and festival law.