Muslim rule in North Africa west of the Nile valley was commenced under conditions very different from those prevailing in Egypt and Syria. The Arabs found this land occupied by the Berbers or Libyans, the same race which from the time of the earliest Pharaohs had been a perpetual menace to Egypt, and which, on the Mediterranean seaboard, had offered a serious problem to Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Gothic colonists. For some thousands of years these Berbers had remained very much the same as when they had emerged from the neolithic stage, and were hardy desert men like the Arabs in pre-Islamic times. Their language was not Semitic, but shows very marked Semitic affinities, and, although language transmission is often quite distinct from racial descent, it seems probable that in this case there was a parallel, and this is best explained by supposing that both were derived from the neolithic race which at one time spread along the whole of the south coast of the Mediterranean and across into Arabia, but that some cause, perhaps the early development of civilization in the Nile valley, had cut off the eastern wing from the rest, and this segregated portion The religion of Islam spread rapidly amongst the Berbers, but it took a particular development, which shows a survival of many pre-Islamic religious ideas. The worship of saints and the devotion paid at their tombs is a corruption which appears elsewhere, on lines quite distinct from the Asiatic beliefs as to incarnation or transmigration, and in the west this saint worship takes an extreme form, although The first leader of Spanish philosophy was the Jew Abu Ayyub Sulayman b. Yahya b. Jabirul (d. 450 A.H. 1058 A.D.), commonly known as Ibn Gabirol (Jabirul), and hence "Avencebrol" in the Latin scholastic writers. He is chiefly known as the author of Maqor Chayim, "The Fountain of Life," a title based on the words of Psalm 36, 10, which was one of the works translated into Latin at the college of Toledo and so well known to the scholastic writers as the Fons Vitae (ed. Baumer: Avencebrolis Fons Vitae, Munster, 1895). It was this work which really introduced neo-Platonism to the West. Ibn Jabirul teaches that God alone is pure reality, and He is the only actual substance; He has no attributes, but in Him are will and wisdom, not as possessed attributes but as aspects of His nature. The world is produced by the impress of form upon pre-existing universal matter. "Separate substances" in the sense of ideas abstracted from the things in which they exist (cf. Aristot. de anima. iii. 7, 8, "and so the mind when Besides this "Fountain of Life" Ibn Gabirol was the author of two ethical treatises, the Tikkun Midwoth han-Nefesh, "the correction of the manners of the soul," in which man is treated as a microcosm after the kabbalistic fashion; and Mibchar hap-Peninim, a collection of ethical maxims collected from the Greek and Arabic philosophers. The former has been published at Luneville in 1804, the latter at Hamburg in 1844. At the beginning of the sixth century A.H., a younger contemporary of al-Ghazali, we have Abu Bakr ibn Bajja (d. 533 A.H. = 1138 A.D.), the first of the Muslim philosophers of Spain. By this time, some three-quarters of a century after the death of Ibn Sina, Arabic philosophy was almost extinct in Asia and was treated as a dangerous heresy. In Egypt, it is true, there was a greater degree of toleration, though less than in the golden age of the Fatimids, but Egypt was regarded with suspicion as the home of heresy and of forms of superstition which were uncongenial to the philosopher. Spain thus becomes the place Within a few years after the death of Avempace the Murabit dynasty came to an end. The succeeding dynasty, the Muwahhids, were of Berber origin like the Murabits, and, like them, had their origin in a religious revival. The foundation of the Muwahhids is associated with Ibn Tumart (d. 524 A.H. = 1129 A.D.). He was a native of Morocco, and a strange combination of fanatic and scholastic. He claimed to be a descendant of ‘Ali, and posed as the "Mahdi" possessing the supernatural grace of isma or "security from error," and thus introduced Shi‘ite ideas into Morocco; al-Ghazali and his doctrines. Roughly treated at Mecca he removed to Egypt, where he rendered himself prominent and objectionable by his puritanical criticisms on the manners of the people. Setting out from Alexandria in a ship travelling westwards he occupied himself with a reformation of the morals of the crew, compelling them to observe the correct hours of prayer and the other duties of religion. In 505 he appeared at Mahdiya, where he took up his abode in a wayside mosque. There he used to sit at the window watching the passers-by, and, whenever he saw any of them carrying a jar of wine or a musical instrument, he used to sally out and seize the offensive article and break it. The common people reverenced him as a saint, but many of the wealthier citizens resented his activities, and at length brought a complaint against him before the Emir Yahya. The Emir heard their complaints and observed Ibn Tumart and took note of the impression he had made upon the populace. With characteristic craft the Emir treated the reformer with all possible respect, but advised, nay rather urged, him to bestow the favour of his presence upon some other town as soon as convenient to him, and so he removed to Bijaiya (Bougie in Algeria). Here his ways were extremely unpopular, and he was driven away. He Ibn Tumart professed to be a follower of al-Ghazali, and introduced his system of orthodox scholasticism to the West. In canon law he followed the reactionary school of Da’ud az-Zahiri and Ibn Hazm, like the Murabits who preceded him. To the multitude he was the champion of Berber nationality; he translated the Qur’an into the Berber language, and caused the call to prayer to be made in Berber instead of Arabic. Muwahhid rule introduced a period of bigotry and of religious persecution. It was under the rule of this dynasty that we find the Jews leaving the country in large numbers and migrating to Africa or to Provence, and many Christians also fled to join the Castilian forces in the north. Modern historians tend to condemn the later severities of Christian rulers towards their Muslim subjects, and often seem to speak of those subjects as the peaceable and culturedWESTERN PHILOSOPHY
