The Affinity between Alghazali’s Intentions of the Philosophers and Maimonides’ Philosophy, According to Shalom Anabi

Beginning in the late 13th century, readers of Alghazali’s Intentions of the Philosophers in the Provençal, Spanish and Italian Jewish spheres viewed this treatise as belonging to the same tradition to which the philosophical stances of Maimonides, or at least some of them, belong. Readers who espoused this view were sometimes also of the opinion that the Intentions was the direct source for Maimonides’ ideas. These views, coupled with an understanding that the tradition in question differs from the philosophical tradition whose representative is Averroes, led students of Maimonides’ philosophy to examine his stances on issues about which the two traditions were in dispute. The present Zuta shows that the same opinions and approaches were adopted and expressed by Shalom Anabi, one of the leading scholars of the Jewish intellectual community of Constantinople in the 15th century.