Already in the last years of Maimonides’ life, a controversy erupted based on theological grounds when he critiqued the institutions of Jewish diaspora within which geonim (rabbinic scholars) found a comfortable living through stipends or donations.
In addition to his institutional critique, in the introduction to his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides suggested that this work would make the employment of rabbinic scholars redundant.
The controversy heated up when most of Maimonides’ works were translated into Hebrew, most notably The Guide for the Perplexed in 1204 by Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon.
Maimonides’ works had been unsurprising for Jewish scholars immersed in the Arabic philosophical tradition, whose critique was mostly limited to his social criticism and his unconventional methodology.
Mystical tendencies and kabbalistic circles were on the rise in al-Andalus and philosophy had enjoyed a great flourishing also of Jewish authors under Muslim rule.
As the Catholic Church and the French crown conducted the Albigensian Crusade in Occitania and adjacent regions, both anti-Maimonidean rabbis and the Dominican-led Inquisition were quick to draw connections between Occitanian "heresy" and Maimonides' ideas.
In 1232, the rabbis of northern France, led by Yonah Gerondi and Solomon ben Abraham of Montpellier, issued a ban against the study of philosophy, including The Guide to the Perplexed and the Sefer HaMada, the introduction to the Mishneh Torah that contained philosophical readings.
Letters exchanged during the 1230s, between David Qimhi and Yuda Alfakhar, are preserved in Iggeroth Qena’oth, it was suggested by S. Harvey that this served as the model for Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera’s Epistle of Debate.
Kabbalistic practices and esoteric exegesis had become commonplace amongst the “philosophers”, on the basis of which (especially astral magic – which, ironically, had been denied reality by Maimonides) they were accused of idolatry.
Abba Mari of Lunel approached Shlomo ibn Aderet of Barcelona because he saw the philosopher's allegorical interpretations and subsidizing of the Torah's authority with Aristotle.
Jacob Anatoli (1194–1296), however, in his Malmad HaTalmidim, did draw heavily on allegorical interpretation, including cosmological readings of Torah passages, ‘in the manner of the Christians’, as his opponents were quick to accuse him of.