  If Ibn Daud can be regarded as the pioneer of medieval Jewish Aristotelianism, the question arises whether Maimonides, who, through his Guide and his prestige turned it into the dominant current in medieval Jewish rationalism, was familiar with the thought of his predecessor. Husik goes as far as to state: “we feel tempted to say that if not for Ibn Daud there would have been no Maimonides” (Husik 2002: 198). However, Maimonides makes no explicit mention of Ibn Daud in any of his works. Yet he seems to allude to him in Guide I.71, when he refers to one of the earlier Jewish Andalusian thinkers whose doctrine is approximately the same as that of his own book, a description that fits Ibn Daud far better than any other of Maimonides’ Jewish predecessors. In spite of the absence of a specific mention of Ibn Daud, it is highly probable that Maimonides was familiar with Ibn Daud’s work, as the large number of similarities between the two works  suggests.[2]  To a large extent, these points of overlap are due to their authors’ common use of theories from Islamic sources, such as the demonstrations for the existence of God.  Other parallels, however, cannot be attributed to these sources, such as parallels in Biblical exegesis, in particular verses that relate to the doctrine of angels, their interpretation of the term elohim and of the terms tselem and demut in Gen.  1:26.[3]