Maimonides (1138-1204) was one of the most revered Jews of all time. Born in “Golden Age” Spain, in the city of Cordoba, he spent most of his adult life in Fustat (old Cairo), Egypt. There he wrote his two greatest works: the Mishneh Torah, his comprehensive codification of Jewish law, and the Guide for the Perplexed, his monumental philosophical work reconciling the Hebrew Bible with Aristotelian philosophy/theology. 

The Mishneh Torah (“repetition of the Torah”) is written to be a halakhic code for all time, detailing not just law for the current world but even for the restored world. As such, it contains the range of halakhic concerns from prayer and marriage to sacrifices and the conduct of a Jewish king. It is written in a clear, precise Hebrew, resembling the Hebrew of the Mishnah, and, unlike its predecessors, it rarely quotes or cites its sources, stating its rulings in Maimonides’ own voice. 

This page is from a fine Spanish manuscript of the Mishneh Torah. On the page, you see the elaborate decoration of one of the Mishneh Torah’s fourteen books. This sort of decoration is found only at the beginning of each such book. The artwork emphasizes the biblical verse that Maimonides uses to introduce each book, and the verse serves as a kind of commentary on the purpose of the laws of that book as a whole. In this way, Maimonides reverses the normal dynamic and makes the “Written Torah” into a commentary on the “Oral Torah.”