Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Ibn Maymun
For first place after ibn-Rushd among the philosophers of the age the only candidate is his Jewish contemporary and fellow Cordovan abu-Imran Musa ibn-Maymum, the most famous of the Hebrew physicians and philosophers of the whole Arabic epoch. IbnMaymun was born in Cordova in 1135,; but his family left the country as a resultyof the Muwahhid persecution and settled in Cairo about 1165. The claim of al-Qifti and ibn-abi-Usaybi’ah that in Spain ibn-Maymun professed Islam in public but practised Judaism in secret has recently been subjected to sharp criticism. In Cairo he became the court physician of the celebrated Salah-al-Din and of his son al-Malik al-Aziz. From 1177 on he held the chief religious office of the Jewish community at Cairo, where he died in 1204. In accordance with his will his body was carried by hand over the route once taken by Moses and buried in Tiberias, where his unpretentious tomb is still visited by throngs of pilgrims. Ailing people among the poor Jews of modern Egypt still seek their cure by spending the night in the underground chamber of the synagogue of Rabbi Mosheh benMaimon in Cairo.
Ibn Maymum distinguished himself as astronomer, theologian, physician and above all as philosopher. His medical science was the standard Galenism of his time derived from al-Razi, ibn-Sina and ibn-Zuhr and enlivened by rational criticism based on personal observation. Ibn-Maymum improved the method of circumcision, ascribed hemorrhoids to constipation, prescribing for them a light diet predominantly vegetarian, and held advanced ideas on hygiene. His most popular medical work was al-Fusul fi al-Tibb (aphorisms of medicine). His leading philosophical work bore the title Dalalat al-Ha’irin’ (the guide of the perplexed)’ in this he tried to reconcile Jewish theology with Muslim Aristotelianism or, in broader terms, faith with reason. Prophetic visions he explained as psychical experiences. To this extent at least he stood as the champion of scientific thought against biblical ”fundamentalism” and aroused the anger of conservative theologians, who referred to his book as Dalala (misguidance, error). His philosophic ideas resembled those of ibn-Rushd, though developed independently. Like ibn-Rushd he knew no Greek and depended entirely on Arabic
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translation. The theory of creation which he propounded, but did not share, was the atomistic one as distinguished from the two others held by the Arabic-writing thinkers, namely, the fundamentalist theory, which made God creator of everything, and the philosophical, which was Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian, but in Hebrew characters, and were soon translated into Hebrew and later in part’into Latin. Their influence, far-reaching in space and time, was exerted mainly over Jews and Christians. Down to the eighteenth century they remained the principal medium through which Jewish thought reached the Gentiles. Modern critics detect traces of that influence in the Dominicans as attested by the works of Albertus Magnus, in Albertus’ rival, Duns Scotus, in Spinoza and even in Kant.