A Maimonidean life: Joseph ben Judah Ibn Shimʿon of Ceuta’s biography reconstructed

This article is an attempt to integrate the available information about Joseph ben Judah Ibn Shimʿon, Maimonides’s famous disciple and the recipient of the Guide of the Perplexed, into a synthetic view of his intellectual profile and to depict his biography in a strictly diachronic perspective. It reconstructs four distinct periods in his life, which—when taken together—are so deeply connected to the person of Maimonides both in their development and in their general outlook that they can perhaps best be described as a “Maimonidean life at the turn of the twelfth to the thirteenth century.” Joseph Ibn Shimʿon is presented as a fascinating and complex personality who was active in a dramatic period of Jewish history in the Islamicate world. His life and work deserve more systematic investigation and attention than they have received thus far.