Maimonides

Born in Córdoba in 1135 or 1138, Moses ben Maimon fled Spain with his family in 1148 when the Almohad Caliphate gave Jews the choice between Islam and exile. Two decades of wandering through Fez, Acre, Jerusalem, and Alexandria ended when he settled in Fustat between 1168 and 1171, where he built parallel careers as astronomer, philosopher, and physician - eventually serving as personal doctor to Saladin. His fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah codified halakha with an authority that endures, and his thirteen principles of faith became doctrinal bedrock, though Spanish critics loudly contested his work even as Jews from Iraq to Yemen embraced it. He led Egypt's Jewish community until his death on 12 December 1204, and was buried in Tiberias, now a pilgrimage site. Islamic scholars claimed him too: steeped in Aristotle, al-Farabi, ibn Sina, and ibn Rushd, his polymathic output fed the Islamic Golden Age and earned regard across the Muslim world.