The
Epistle to Yemen or
Yemen Epistle (
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
: אגרת תימן,
Iggeret Teman) was an important communication written by
MaimonidesMoses Maimonides, also known as Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon or the acronym the Rambam , was born in Cordoba, Spain on March 30, 1135, and died in Egypt on December 13, 1204....
and sent to the
Yemenite JewsYemenite Jews are those Jews who live, or whose recent ancestors lived, in Yemen Yemenite Jews (Hebrew: תֵּימָנִים,
Standard Temanim
Tiberian ; singular תֵּימָנִי,
Standard Temani
Tiberian ) are those Jews who live, or...
.
It arose because of
religious persecutionReligious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs of affiliations....
and
heresyHeresy is proposing some unorthodox change to an established system of belief, especially a religion, that conflicts with the previously established opinion of scholars of that belief such as canon. It is sometimes confused with apostasy which is disaffiliation from orthodoxy and blasphemy which is...
in 12th-century
YemenYemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is a country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia...
. The average Jewish population of Yemen for many centuries was very small. The
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s were scattered throughout the country, but they were successful in business and acquired books about the history of their faith.
There was a revolt against
SaladinṢalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was a Kurdish Muslim who became the Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He led Islamic opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
as
sultanSultan is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. Originally it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", or "rulership", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power"...
in the last quarter of the 12th century, and Shia Muslims began to persecute the Jewish faith in the Yemen at this time.
The
Epistle to Yemen or
Yemen Epistle (
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
: אגרת תימן,
Iggeret Teman) was an important communication written by
MaimonidesMoses Maimonides, also known as Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon or the acronym the Rambam , was born in Cordoba, Spain on March 30, 1135, and died in Egypt on December 13, 1204....
and sent to the
Yemenite JewsYemenite Jews are those Jews who live, or whose recent ancestors lived, in Yemen Yemenite Jews (Hebrew: תֵּימָנִים,
Standard Temanim
Tiberian ; singular תֵּימָנִי,
Standard Temani
Tiberian ) are those Jews who live, or...
.
It arose because of
religious persecutionReligious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs of affiliations....
and
heresyHeresy is proposing some unorthodox change to an established system of belief, especially a religion, that conflicts with the previously established opinion of scholars of that belief such as canon. It is sometimes confused with apostasy which is disaffiliation from orthodoxy and blasphemy which is...
in 12th-century
YemenYemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is a country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia...
. The average Jewish population of Yemen for many centuries was very small. The
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s were scattered throughout the country, but they were successful in business and acquired books about the history of their faith.
There was a revolt against
SaladinṢalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was a Kurdish Muslim who became the Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He led Islamic opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
as
sultanSultan is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. Originally it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", or "rulership", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power"...
in the last quarter of the 12th century, and Shia Muslims began to persecute the Jewish faith in the Yemen at this time. At the same time, a man began preaching a
syncretistic religionSyncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate or contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. This may involve attempts to merge and analogise several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an...
that combined
Judaism and IslamThe historical interaction of Judaism and Islam started in the 7th century AD with the origin and spread of Islam in the Arabian peninsula. Because Judaism and Islam share a common origin in the Middle East through Abraham, both are considered Abrahamic religions...
, and claimed that the
BibleThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
had foretold his coming as a
prophetIn religion, a prophet is a person who has been contacted by, or has encountered, the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other humans...
.
The
persecutionReligious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs of affiliations....
and increasing
apostasyApostasy is the formal religious disaffiliation or abandonment or renunciation of one's religion, especially if the motive is deemed unworthy. In a technical sense, as used sometimes by sociologists without the pejorative connotations of the word, the term refers to renunciation and criticism of,...
led one of Yemen's most respected Jewish scholars,
Jacob ben NathanaelJacob ben Nathanael ibn al-Fayyumi was a rosh yeshiva of the Yemenite Jews in the second half of the twelfth century CE. All that is known of him is that at the suggestion of Solomon ha-Kohen, a pupil of Maimonides, he wrote to the latter asking his advice in regard to a pseudo-Messiah who was...
, to write for counsel to
RabbiRabbi is the term in Judaism for a religious teacher. The word rabbi derives from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ‘great’ in many senses, including "revered." The word comes from the Semitic root R-B-B, and is cognate to Arabic ربّ rabb, meaning "lord" Rabbi ' onMouseout='HidePop("21600")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Maimonides">Maimonides
Moses Maimonides, also known as Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon or the acronym the Rambam , was born in Cordoba, Spain on March 30, 1135, and died in Egypt on December 13, 1204....
.
Maimonides replied in an epistle written in
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
that was later translated into
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
. This letter made a tremendous impression on Yemenite Jewry, and effectively stopped the
new religious movementA new religious movement is a faith-based community, or ethical, spiritual, or philosophical group of recent origin. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may be part of a wider religion, such as Christianity, in which case they will be distinct from pre-existing denominations...
. It also served as a source of strength, consolation and support for the faith in the continuing persecution.
Maimonides interceded with Saladin in
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
, and shortly thereafter the persecution came to an end.
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