Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/264

 island. In course of time the recluse, who is perfectly well aware of the neighbouring island and its inhabitants, begins to feel great pity for them in that they are excluded from the more perfect felicity which he enjoys, and in an honest desire for their welfare, goes over to them and preaches the truth as he has found it. For the most part he is quite unintelligible to them, and the only result is that he produces confusion, doubt, and controversial strife amongst those whom he desired to benefit, but who are incapable of the intellectual life which he has led. In the end he returns to his island convinced that it is a mistake to interfere with the conventional religion of the multitude.

Ibn Rushd (A.H. 520 = 595), known to the West as Averroes, was the greatest of the Arabic philosophers, and was practically their last. He was a native of Cordova and the friend and protégé of Ibn Tufayl, by whom he was introduced to Abu Ya'qub in 548. He was, however, more outspoken than Ibn Tufayl, and wrote several controversial works against al-Ghazali and his followers. The family to which he belonged was one whose members usually became jurists, and Ibn Rushd acted as Qadi in various Spanish towns; like most of the Arabic philosophers he studied medicine, and in 578 was appointed court physician to Abu Ya'qub. By this time he had finished his career as an author. Under the Muwahhid Abu Yusuf al-Mansur he was censured as a heretic and banished from Cordova. It must be remembered