Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/261

 and fled forthwith to Tinamel, where he openly raised the standard of revolt against a corrupt and unfaithful dynasty. At first this rebellion did not meet with much success, but, after the Mahdi's death, the leadership fell to his pupil, 'Abdu l-Mumin, who took Oran, Tlemsen, Fez, Sale, Ceuta, and in 542 became master of Morocco, and in due course seized all the empire of the Murabits. The new dynasty established by 'Abdu l-Mumin is known by the name of the Muwahhids or "Unitarians," a title which the Spanish historians render by "Almohades," and their rule endured until 667 A.H. (= 1268 A.D.).

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 cultured