Maimonides ing military expeditions into eastern Iran Ghaznavid forces conquered Khurasan in 999, which led to the collapse of the Samanid dynasty, and in 1009, the Iranian province of Sijistan also fell The Ghaznavids defeated their only rivals to power in the eastern Islamic lands, the Khwarazmians, in 1017 Mahmud pushed as far west as the Iranian province of Rayy—ruled by the Buyid confederation based in Baghdad—and conquered it in 1029 Despite his substantial conquests in eastern and central Iran, Mahmud’s greatest legacy was the expansion of Muslim power eastward into South Asia Beginning in 1001 Ghaznavid armies campaigned in India, occasionally returning to Iran to beat back incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes from Central Asia Mahmud went as far south in India as the state of Gujarat, though he was only able to establish firm control over the northern region of Punjab Although he used Hindu Indian auxiliary troops, Mahmud also ordered or allowed the destruction of Hindu temples However as a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim, he also ordered the persecution of Shi’i Muslims, both in the Indus Valley and in Rayy, which had been ruled by the Shi’i Buyids Mahmud’s military successes were balanced out by his patronage of certain Muslim scholars and philosophers, including the famous historian and anthropologist Abu Raihan al-Biruni, who wrote a lengthy and detailed study of the Indian subcontinent At its height, during the reign of Mahmud, the Ghaznavid Empire stretched from the Caspian Sea in the west to the Punjab and northern India After Mahmud’s death in 1030, his son Masud assumed the throne However the empire’s centralized structure began to disintegrate, as Masud concentrated on further expanding Ghaznavid authority in India while failing to recognize the threat posed by the Seljuk dynasty, which began to move into Ghaznavid lands in Iran Masud tried to stop the Seljuk advance but was defeated in 1040 at the Battle of Dandanqan and was overthrown the next year The Ghaznavids remained in power until 1187, though their landholdings were steadily reduced until they included only the city of Ghazna in Afghanistan and small sections of that region See also Isma’ilis; Shi’ism Further reading: Bosworth, Clifford Edmund The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–1040 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963; Bosworth, Clifford Edmund The Medieval History of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia London: Variorum Reprints, 1977; Hodgson, Marshall G S The Venture of Islam, Volume 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods Chicago, IL: 263 University of Chicago Press, 1974; Nazim, Muhammad The Life and Times of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931; Peters, F E Allah’s Commonwealth: A History of Islam in the Near East 600–1100 a.d New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973 Christopher Anzalone Maimonides (1135–1204) philosopher and rabbi Maimonides, or Moses ben Maimon, was born into a scholarly Jewish family in Córdoba, when southern Spain or Andalusia was ruled by Islamic dynasties Along with Averroës he became the most well-known intellectual from Muslim Spain His family fled Spain for Fez, Morocco, when a repressive Berber Muslim dynasty came to power in Spain To escape religious persecution the family claimed to be Muslims but ultimately moved from Morocco to Palestine and Egypt, where they finally settled in Cairo Maimonides was a well-known rabbi as well as a doctor and scholar He served as the physician to the son and vizier of Saladin (Salah ad din, Yusuf) and became head of the large Jewish community in Cairo Maimonides was a prolific writer on many subjects He wrote 10 medical works in Arabic giving advice on diet, sexual intercourse, and healthy lifestyles Written in neoHebrew, one of his greatest works, Mishna Torah (Repetition of the law), detailed all the laws of the Torah and other Jewish texts His Guide to the Perplexed (1190) was written in Arabic with Hebrew characters but was subsequently translated into Hebrew and Latin The guide was one of Maimonides’s most controversial works, causing widespread and acrimonious debate over the interrelationships of religion and rationality in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic communities Maimonides attempted to reconcile devout religious practices and faith with rational, scientific tenets He posited that the future coming of a messiah was one of the 13 tenets of Jewish belief and believed in the divine word but argued that rationality should be applied to legal precepts and the conduct of everyday life He also rejected Ptolemaic astronomy that argued that the Sun and stars revolved around Earth He argued that humans should not be forced to choose between religion and reason and, in his prolific writings, discussed issues of immortality, creation of the universe and humankind, and free will He died in Cairo and was buried in Tiberias, Palestine