His people, after ten years’ wandering in Spain, had repaired to Fez, where persecution had driven many Jews to assume the mask of Mohammedanism--a form of compulsory hypocrisy, examples of which abounded in every country. A zealot wrote a pamphlet denouncing these apparent renegades as traitors to the cause of Israel. Maimonides, who was one of them, undertook to vindicate their conduct. But, while defending their prudence, he strove to combat their lukewarmness, and to confirm the wavering; endeavours which nearly cost him his life at the hands of the Mohammedans. In the dead of night he and his family embarked on board a vessel bound to Palestine. After a month’s perilous voyage the refugees landed at St. Jean d’Acre (Acco), whence they proceeded to Jerusalem, then in Christian hands, and finally reached Egypt. There Maimonides lost his father first, and then his brother, suffered severely in his health and fortune, and was obliged to eke out a modest livelihood by the practice of medicine. But in the midst of all afflictions and occupations he continued his first great work on the Talmud, which appeared in 1168 under the characteristic title, _The Light_. This work, though it failed to make its mark among the Jews of Egypt, gradually brought fame to the author abroad. In 1175 he was already revered as a great Rabbinical authority, and questions bearing on religion and law were submitted to him from all parts of Israel. At the same time he busied himself with the affairs of the Cairo community of which he was made Rabbi. In 1180 he completed his _Religious Code_, in which he wedded Judaism to philosophy. The object of the book was to introduce light and limit into the chaos of Biblical and Talmudical teaching. The _Code_ attained wide popularity, and copies of it were diligently conned in every corner of the Jewish world from India in the East to Spain in the West. The learning as well as the character of Maimonides excited universal respect, and many were the titles bestowed upon the sage by his admiring co-religionists. Maimonides was proclaimed “the Enlightener of the eyes of Israel.” Opposition and calumny, the involuntary tributes which envy pays to success, came in due course; but Maimonides who had not been intoxicated by praise did not suffer himself to be intimidated by obloquy. His reputation as a physician was almost as great as his theological renown; a Mohammedan poet declares that “Galen’s art heals only the body, but Maimonides’ the body and soul”; Saladin, then Vizier of Egypt, engaged him as his physician, and Richard Coeur de Lion, who during his crusade in the Holy Land heard of Maimonides, invited him to be his physician in ordinary, an honour which the sage declined. Thanks to the high esteem in which he was held by the Mohammedan rulers of Egypt, Maimonides was, in about 1187, made supreme and hereditary head of all the Egyptian communities. While at the height of his power and popularity Maimonides