The collapse of the Umayyad caliphate of Córdoba in the first decades of the eleventh century led to the period of the Taifa kings in Andalus. These kings, whose power was confined to one city or region, were never able to claim caliphal status, both because their power was too limited to make such an assertion plausible and because they lacked the important attribute of Qurashi descent. The most powerful of them, the Abbadid rulers of Seville, took quasi-caliphal titles, Mu‘tadid (1042–69) and Mu‘tamid (1069–91), and for a while maintained the fiction that they were ruling in the name of the vanished Umayyad Hishām, until the passing of the years made such a claim ridiculous.

Christian advances in the late eleventh century, especially the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI of León-Castile in 1085, meant that the position of the Taifa kings became impossible to sustain and, with some reluctance, most of them accepted the overlordship of the Berber Almoravids (Ar. Murābitūn) from Morocco. The Almoravids were a coalition of Sanhaja Berbers from the western Sahara who had been brought together by the religious reformer Abd Allah b. Yāsin. Ibn Yāsin had travelled in the Middle East and returned to his native people with a clear message that the Islam they practised was at best corrupt and at worst heretical. Ibn Yāsin’s puritanical reform movement soon spread to most of Morocco and, between 1086 and 1090, established its rule over most of Andalus except for the northern kingdom of Zaragoza. Under the rule of Yūsuf b. Tashfīn the Almoravids were able to stem the Christian advance, defeating Alfonso VI at the Battle of Zallaqa in 1086. However, under the rule of Yūsuf’s pious but ineffective son Alī (1106–43), the military position in Andalus deteriorated and the Almoravids were faced by a major new ideological and political challenge from another group of puritanical reformers, the Almohads (Ar. Muwahhidūn).

The Almoravids, despite the extent of their empire, including as it did at its height most of Andalus, and Morocco as far south as the Sahara, never claimed the title of caliph. Instead they acknowledged the overlordship of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad, bringing the Maghreb back into the wider umma. They themselves took the title of Emir al-Muslimīn. Strangely, this rather obvious title, meaning simply ‘Prince of the Muslims’, was very seldom used by Muslim monarchs, the caliphal title always being Amīr al-Mu’minīn. The implication was that while they appealed to all Muslims they nonetheless remained emirs under the overall authority of the caliphs in Baghdad.

Ibn Tūmart and the Rise of the Almohads

Almoravid rule was challenged in Morocco from 1120 on by the emergence of the Almohads. As with the Almoravids, the movement was begun by a religious reformer, Muhammad b. Tūmart, who had travelled to the east and returned with a mission for religious change. Ibn Tūmart was a Berber, but unlike the Almoravids he hailed from one of the Masmuda tribes of the Atlas Mountains and his followers were people from mountain villages rather than nomads from the desert. In the east he claimed to have been taught by the great Ghazālī (d. 1111), whose book Reviving the Religious Sciences had argued strongly that simple obedience to the strict laws of Islam was not enough and that Muslims should follow the spirit of Islam if they wanted to be good Muslims. Combining Sufism with traditional legal scholarship, his writings were widely circulated and complete anathema to the rigorist legalistic authorities of Almoravid Andalus, who ordered his books to be burned.

Ibn Tūmart claimed that the great man had given him his blessing and asked him to avenge the burning of his works. Whether any of this is true is quite uncertain, but it did mean that he could claim to be the disciple of the greatest religious thinker of his age. Ibn Tūmart’s life became the subject of an account, almost like the biography of the Prophet Muhammad himself, and truth was embellished by piety so that we cannot be sure of all the details. What is clear is that he returned in the years 1117 to 1119, pausing along the way to preach a simple and puritanical Islam criticizing the wearing of bright clothes, the mixing of the sexes at festivals, the playing of musical instruments and the selling of wine.

By 1120 he had returned to his native Morocco and is said to have preached to the Almoravid ruler Alī b. Yūsuf in his capital at Marrakesh. His appeal for a reformed Islam was rejected and he made his way to the mountains where he had been brought up, to continue his mission from the safety they provided.

Ibn Tūmart had failed to win over the Almoravid leadership and became determinedly hostile to them. Both movements were intent on establishing a reformed Islam, free of what they regarded as the laxities and abuses which had crept in. It is difficult to see what divided them. Ibn Tūmart demanded that Islamic law be based on the Qur’ān and hadīth, rather than the reason and argument which were used to support it, and this seems to have aroused the opposition of the legal scholars whose work was the ideological foundation of Almoravid doctrine. He insisted on the absolute unity of God and accused the Almoravids of anthropomorphism, of representing God as a human being. This insistence on the unity of God gave the Almohads the name by which they are generally known to history, Almohade being the Spanish version of the Arabic Muwwahidūn, meaning those who assert the unity of God. He also attacked the Sanhaja Berbers who formed the backbone of the military support of the regime: like many of the Touareg of today, the men wore veils to protect their faces from the blowing sand and fierce heat of the desert. This enabled Ibn Tūmart to accuse them of effeminacy.

These were differences which could be stressed and used to dismiss the Almoravids as heretics and morally corrupt, but what really distinguished the Almohads from the Almoravids was the style of leadership. After his rejection by the Almoravid court, Ibn Tūmart determined to break with them completely. He began proclaiming that he was the infallible Mahdī who would lead the Muslims to true Islam. He also developed a genealogy for himself which showed that he was descended from the Prophet Muhammad through the Idrisids who had come to settle in North Africa. You could not be a member of the Almohad movement unless you accepted Ibn Tūmart as the God-appointed leader whose word was law. There was no room for compromise.

In 1122 Ibn Tūmart established his base in the little town of Tinmal, to the south of Marrakesh, which was accessible only through a narrow mountain pass. This was to become his Medina, the place to which he made his Hijra and where he established his regime. The mosque that was built there still exists, recently restored, a physical witness to the early days of the movement. He also set up a remarkable hierarchy among his followers, which aimed to supplement or even replace the tribal loyalties which were so strong among these mountain people. The Mahdī himself was, naturally, the head of the organization. Below him were the Council of Ten, all early followers of Ibn Tūmart, either people who had joined him on his journey west, like Abd al-Mu’min, or local tribal leaders. Below them were a Council of Fifty, mostly Berber tribal leaders from the Atlas region. They were assisted by a corps of people known as talba (sing. tālib). This term is usually translated as ‘students’ and, in its Persian plural, gives us Taliban. The talba were one of the most distinctive features of the Almohad regime. They were, in a sense, political commissars, ideologues who expounded Almohad ideology but also fulfilled a number of what might be described as civil service roles. Adherence to Almohad ideology was enforced with bloodthirsty severity. In 1129–30 there was the first tamyīz, or purge, among the Berbers, which resulted in the deaths of many who were thought to be opposed to Ibn Tūmart’s authority or simply showed insufficient enthusiasm.

Another distinctive feature of the Almohad regime was its Berber identity. Berber was a vernacular which was, and still is, widely spoken in North Africa, but it had never been a written language nor, as far as we can tell, the language of religion and preaching. Ibn Tūmart not only preached in Berber, but he also produced a Berber version of the Qur’ān. Arabic was still used as an official language and remained the language of high culture, but a knowledge of Berber was essential for anyone who wanted to progress in the Almohad hierarchy and there are examples of qādīs and other officials in Andalus losing their jobs because they could not understand the language. This was the first time in the Muslim world that a regime had promulgated a non-Arabic Islam. Persian was widely spoken and written by the twelfth century and the great Ghazālī himself wrote religious tracts in Persian as well as Arabic, but there was no attempt to use a Persian translation of the Qur’ān, still less to make the learning of Persian compulsory. This Berber identity produced a sense of solidarity among the various Berber tribes committed to the movement, but it also alienated many Muslims, especially in Andalus where Berber was not really spoken at all. When the military power of the movement began to fail in the early thirteenth century, the Almohads were easily distinguished by their disgruntled subjects and this certainly contributed to the decline of the dynasty.

From his base in Tinmal, Ibn Tūmart launched a series of attacks on the Almoravid capital of Marrakesh, but in 1130 the movement suffered what might have been a deadly blow. Ibn Tūmart was fatally wounded in an unsuccessful attack on the city. With the Mahdī gone, leadership passed to one of his earliest followers, Abd al-Mu’min. Abd al-Mu’min established his control over the movement and, crucially, took the titles of caliph and Amīr al-Mu’minīn. Whether consciously or not, he was casting himself in the role of Abū Bakr to Ibn Tūmart’s Muhammad. Ibn Tūmart seems to have had no sons and his brothers were systematically removed from any positions of responsibility and influence. It was the family of Abd al-Mu’min who were to provide the caliphs until the end of the Almohad regime.

Like Abū Bakr, Abd al-Mu’min was determined to continue the expansion of the Almohad movement. In a series of campaigns in the 1140s he systematically subdued the cities of Morocco, and on 24 March 1147 Marrakesh was finally captured. It soon became the most important capital of the new caliphate and the real centre of Almohad power.

After the conquest of Morocco, it was inevitable that the Almohads would become involved in the affairs of Andalus. The collapse of the Almoravid regime in Marrakesh had left the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula exposed to the depredations of Christians. Without military support from North Africa, Andalus was hardly viable. The pursuit of the jihād was a core function of caliphate and Abd al-Mu’min would certainly have been aware not only of the duties this involved but also the opportunities it would provide for developing the prestige of his office among his own followers and in the wider Muslim world.

His military support was urgently needed in Andalus. In 1147, the same year in which the caliph conquered Marrakesh, the king of the newly established kingdom of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, conquered Lisbon with the help of warriors from northern Europe sailing to join the Second Crusade. At the same time the Castilians contrived to capture, and hold for the next decade, the port of Almería, right on the south coast of the peninsula and an important centre of communication with North Africa. Throughout Andalus, the advances of the Christians provoked uprisings against the remaining Almoravid governors and garrisons. That year, invited by local leaders, Abd al-Mu’min sent the first Almohad forces to the Algarve.

The advance into Andalus was slow. This was partly because of strategic factors which made the Almohad state very different from the Almoravid. The Almohads were always active on two fronts. The Almohad empire at its height included all of modern Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco as well as a large part of modern Spain and Portugal. It was never easy to control these far-flung territories: distances were long and much of the land was wild and sparsely populated. In the 1150s Abd al-Mu’min devoted much of his military energies and resources to driving out the Normans out of Sicily, who had conquered the important seaports of Tunisia. It was not until 1160 that they were finally dislodged from their last stronghold, in Mahdia, and the caliph could devote his attention more completely to the jihād in Andalus. He took care to write to the people of Seville and presumably others in Andalus with a grandiloquent account of his victory over these infidels. The Almohads always paid great attention to what we might describe as the public relations aspect of caliphate, but at the same time the letter could hardly disguise the fact that he was giving them no real support against the increasingly aggressive Christians who were raiding right up to the gates of the city. Even with the Normans gone, the east was far from easy to control. Abd al-Mu’min had to deal with the numerous and powerful Arab tribes who had migrated to the area. He tried to do this by force but also by incorporating many of the tribesmen into the Almohad armies. Here they were a disruptive presence, resented by many of the Almohads and by the Andalusi military in the army. Their presence also led to an increasing Arabization of the Maghreb: it is ironic that this most Berber of dynasties should have facilitated the spread of the Arabic language.

Abd al-Mu’min was also busy restructuring the caliphate. He decided to build a new military base and centre of operations on the Atlantic coast where he could assemble armies and supplies for the jihād in Andalus. This base was called the ribāt, an Arabic word which means, among other things, a fortification, where men could go to practise religious exercises, particularly fasting and praying during Ramadan, and confronting the infidel. He constructed a massive fortification on a rocky headland on the other side of the river Bu Regreg from the ancient city of Salé and began work on a huge mosque. The city became the core of what is now the modern capital of Morocco, Rabat.

He also took time to establish his own family firmly in control of the caliphate. It helped that he had no less than fourteen sons, and most of the main provincial centres were governed by them. Other members of the old Almohad families were also given prestigious and lucrative positions and this consolidated the hereditary nature of the regime.

There was no pretence here that all the Muslim subjects of the caliphate were in any sense equals. This was a caliphate with a strict hereditary structure. It also had no pretensions to be a universal caliphate. Abd al-Mu’min never declared any intention to conquer the rest of the Muslim world or challenge the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. In this he was perhaps helped by the fact that the Fatimid caliphate of Cairo had been abolished in 1171. There were now only two caliphates in the Muslim world, both with very separate spheres of influence. There was some limited communication between them. At one stage in the 1180s, Saladin, who of course claimed to be in loyal service to the Abbasids, tried to negotiate a naval alliance with the Almohads against the Crusaders. Although this never came to anything, it shows that people in the eastern Islamic world both knew of and, at least at one level, respected the Almohads.

Stability in Andalus was frequently disrupted, not just by the aggressive Christians but also by groups among the Muslim population of the country who were bitterly opposed to the Almohads. This was especially true of one Ibn Mardanīsh, who effectively ruled Valencia and Murcia and the whole of the Levante and was quite prepared to ally with the Christians in his struggle with the Almohads. The rhetoric of caliphate cut very little ice with such men when they could see that it was no more than a cover for Almohad dynastic control.

Abd al-Mu’min tried to counter this by incorporating local Andalusi lords into his army and paying them salaries, but though they often fought well they were usually excluded from the hierarchy and the best paid jobs. He also attempted to reorganize the administration of Andalus. The Almohads were always conscious of the legacy of the Umayyad caliphs of Córdoba and they attempted to harness this memory to boost their own prestige. After a triumph over Muslim rebels in Granada in 1162, the caliph ordered that the capital and all the government offices should be transferred from Seville to Córdoba. Seville had been chosen as the centre of Almohad administration in the Iberian Peninsula because of its good communications with Morocco. The river Guadalquivir was navigable as far up as Seville but not up to Córdoba. Córdoba was also by this time an impoverished and underpopulated city whose few inhabitants tried to make a living by farming deserted plots within the old city walls. The decision to move to Córdoba showed that prestige triumphed over logic and practical considerations.

Another attempt to harness the Umayyad legacy was by taking possession of the Qur’ān of Uthmān. The so-called Qur’ān of Uthmān was, as we have seen, used as a legitimizing relic by the Abbasids, but it would seem that this was another copy preserved by the Umayyads of Córdoba. It had been of special significance to them because Uthmān was himself an Umayyad and it represented evidence of their connection with one of the great figures of early Islam. This Qur’ān was now brought to from Córdoba to Marrakesh to form part of the spiritual armoury of the Almohad caliphate, symbolizing the transfer of the caliphate from the Umayyads to the Almohads. Nothing seems to be known about the fate of this volume after the fall of the Almohads in the late thirteenth century.

Despite the caliph’s administrative reforms and the appointment of his sons as governors of the cities, the situation in Andalus remained precarious. In 1163 he prepared a huge expedition, gathered at his new stronghold of Rabat. There were said to have been 100,000 horsemen and 100,000 foot soldiers and the camp stretched for some nineteen kilometres. The intention was to attack all the main Christian states, Portugal, León, Castile and Barcelona, simultaneously. It would certainly have been a major invasion and might have secured the future of Andalus under Almohad rule, but the problems of supplying and directing so large a force would have been formidable.

The Later Almohad Caliphs

In the event all the preparations came to nothing because the caliph himself died in 1163. Abd al-Mu’min was the real founder of the Almohad caliphate. He had taken the legacy of Ibn Tūmart the Mahdī and transformed his religious vision into a powerful state, by far the strongest power in the western Islamic world, and established himself and his family in firm control.

He had chosen his son Muhammad as his heir in 1154 and had him publicly acknowledged. In the Almohad tradition Muhammad had rendered himself unsuitable for the position by drinking wine and other lapses. In the last years of his life, another brother, Umar, had become the caliph’s chief adviser and he was with Abd al-Mu’min when he died in Rabat. Umar now kept his death a secret while he arranged the succession, not of Muhammad, but of his own full brother Abū Ya‘qūb Yūsuf, who was then governor of Seville. Yūsuf and Umar shared the same mother. They effectively took power and pushed their other brothers aside. From then on only the descendants of Umar and Yūsuf counted in power and succession.

The new caliph was a rather unusual character among the military and political leaders of his time. He was around twenty-five years old and had some political experience as governor of Seville and military experience serving in his father’s armies. He was, however, a very different man from his father. He was bookish and intellectual, but he was not a natural military leader and at crucial moments seemed to lose his nerve and fail to take advantage of opportunities. We can observe his caliphate in action because we have part of a very full chronicle compiled by an Andalusi bureaucrat working for the Almohad government in Seville, Ibn Sāhib al-Salāt. His chronicle is full of lively, first-hand observations and enables us to see Almohad society and the interaction of personalities with rare intimacy.

Like his Umayyad predecessor Hakam II, Yūsuf built up a most impressive library. As caliph, he had ample authority to do so and sensible men did not refuse his request for books. A private collector in Seville remembered how this was done:

The Commander of the Faithful came to hear of my collection so he sent Kāfūr the Eunuch with a selected group of slaves to my house when I was in the government offices and knew nothing about it. He ordered him not to frighten anyone in the house and not to take anything except books and threatened him, and those with him, with the direst punishments if the people of the house lost so much as a pin. I was told about this while I was in the office and I thought he intended to confiscate all my property so, almost out of my mind, I rode to my house. There was the eunuch Kāfūr standing at the door and the books were being brought out to him. When he saw that I was obviously terrified he said, ‘Don’t panic!’ and added that the caliph sent me his greetings and had mentioned me favourably, and he carried on smiling until I relaxed. Then he said, ‘Ask the members of your household if anyone has frightened them or if anything is missing,’ and they replied, ‘No one has frightened us and nothing is missing.’ Kāfūr then said we were free to go. Then he himself went into the library store and ordered that all the books be removed. When I heard this, all my anxiety disappeared.¹

The caliph’s interest in books was certainly genuine and other members of the Almohad elite seem to have shared his enthusiasm, but he was taken away from his studies by the need to assert Almohad control over those parts of eastern Spain ruled by Ibn Mardanish and to unite the Muslims against the persistent Christian aggression. Unlike his firm action in appropriating his subjects’ books, he was less resolute in leading the Muslim armies. It was not until 1171, eight years after his accession, that he finally crossed the Straits and landed in Seville. He decided to launch a major campaign to retake the small frontier town of Huete, south-east of Toledo, which had recently been captured by the Christians. It was a modest objective, but a large army of Almohad and Arabs was assembled and in the summer of 1172 the siege of the little town began.

What happened next is related by one of the Spanish Muslim commanders engaged in the campaign, Ibn Azzūn:

When I was fighting with the Christians in the tower, which was the heart of their resistance in the city of Huete, and victory and triumph over them were within our grasp, I saw none of the valiant Almohad soldiers or commanders who were supporting me. I ran in person to the caliph who was in session with his brother and the talba of the court discussing questions of religious dogma. I said to him, ‘My lord caliph! Send me reinforcements for I am on the point of victory!’ I only wanted him to show himself on horseback so that the people and all the people would see him and they would enter the city there and then. But he did not answer me and carried on with what he was doing. I realized that the intention of the jihād had been corrupted and that the expedition had failed. I returned, despairing of victory and very preoccupied and thoughtful.²

As Ibn Azzūn predicted, the campaign was a failure. The huge army broke up and retreated with nothing achieved. The caliph himself returned to Marrakesh, leaving his ineffective deputies to try to organize the defence of Andalus. He busied himself with the politics of Morocco and the eastern half of his caliphate in Tunisia. It was not until 1183 that he came back to Andalus. The next year he attempted a campaign to reconquer Lisbon, which had been conquered by the Portuguese in 1147. His second attempt at leading the jihād was even less successful than the first. In an abortive attempt to take the city of Santarem on the river Tagus, a sortie by the defenders caught the caliph and his followers by surprise. He himself, conspicuous in the red tent which marked his post, was wounded and died shortly afterwards.

His successor, who took the ancient and majestic title of Mansūr, was much less of an intellectual and much more of a warrior. His regime was less interested in intellectual activity and he devoted himself to defending Andalus against the Christians and led the last substantial Muslim victory over Christian forces when he defeated King Alfonso VII of Castile at Alarcos in 1195.

The early decades of the thirteenth century brought home the vulnerabilities of Andalus and the inability of the Almohad caliphate to deal with them. When Mansūr died in in January 1199 he was succeeded by his son, then only seventeen years old, who took the title (ironically given what was to come) of Nāsir, the Victorious. The first decade of his reign was spent in North Africa, stabilizing the situation in Tunisia by entrusting the country to a prominent Almohad family, the Hafsids, who later established themselves as independent rulers, taking the title of caliph. In 1211 the young caliph assembled an army at Rabat and crossed the Straits to Seville. In 1212 he was faced by a Christian expedition which included King Alfonso VIII of Castile, King Pedro II of Aragón and numerous other Christian notables, including French barons. This display of Christian unity was supported by Pope Innocent III, always eager to encourage crusading.

The Christians made their way through the rugged mountains of the Sierra Morena and encountered the Almohad army, led by the caliph in person, at Las Navas de Tolosa on 16 July 1212. It is unclear why the Muslim army performed so badly; at the time there were stories of disputes within the ranks and resentment at Nāsir’s erratic and sometimes cruel leadership. By nightfall the battle was over, the Almohad army broke in full flight and the caliph rushed to the safety of the fortified city of Jaén. From there he returned to Marrakesh where he died shortly afterwards. Some said he was murdered by his dissatisfied officers. Meanwhile the magnificent banner of the caliphs was taken north by the victorious Castilians and placed in the monastery of Las Huelgas outside Burgos where it can still be seen today, a genuine relic of the Almohad caliphate.

The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa spelt the end of the Almohad caliphate as a successful protector of the Muslims of Andalus. The defeat of the army and the death of the caliph led to rivalry and strife among the Almohad elite in Marrakesh, which allowed the Christians to consolidate and advance. The ancient capital of Córdoba, seat of the Umayyad caliphs, fell to Fernando III of Castile in 1236, and Seville twelve year later in 1248. At that point the majority of the territory and population of Andalus were lost to Christian rule and the caliphate disappeared from European territory. The Almohads now retreated to Morocco, but the various pretenders to the caliphal title fought each other and the Berber tribes increasingly rejected their authority. In 1269 the last caliph of the dynasty, Wāhid, was ignominiously murdered by a slave in Marrakesh. Neither the Nasrid kings of Granada, who ruled what remained of Andalus from their stronghold in the southern mountains until 1492, nor the Merinids, who came to control most of Morocco, aspired to the caliphal title. The attempt to unify the Muslims of the west in an independent caliphate had failed and there was never to be another in later centuries.

The Culture of the Almohad Caliphate

Before leaving the Almohad caliphate, we should remember the important cultural legacy which survived long after it had disappeared. The dynasty were great patrons of architecture. In the beginning, as we saw, they built a new mosque in their mountain stronghold at Tinmal. As rulers of Marrakesh they constructed a new mosque in the old town. The ruins of the mosque at Rabat show the scale of Almohad architectural ambitions, but perhaps the finest surviving example of their work can be seen in Seville, the capital of their Andalusi domains. Apart from some work in the courtyard, the mosque has been replaced by the late Gothic cathedral, but the minaret, now a bell-tower called the Giralda, still remains in all its glory as the symbol of the city.

We have already seen that the caliph Abū Ya‘qūb Yūsuf was an eager collector of books. He was also a committed supporter of writers and thinkers and can perhaps be numbered with the Abbasid Ma’mūn and the Umayyad of Córdoba Hakam II among caliphs who were genuine intellectuals. There was an established tradition of philosophical thought and discussion in Andalusi cultural life, but there were also strong currents, notably among the conservative legal scholars, that were fiercely opposed to questioning or even discussing anything which might touch on issues of faith. It was caliphal patronage which enabled the flame of enquiry to burn brightly in the last quarter of the twelfth century.

Yūsuf’s main intellectual adviser was the writer and philosopher Abū Bakr b. Tufayl. Ibn Tufayl was born in Guadix, north-east of Granada, and first attracted attention as a physician. In 1154 he secured an appointment as secretary to the governor of Tangier, who was a member of the ruling dynasty. From there he graduated to becoming Yūsuf’s doctor and adviser until his death in Marrakesh. Ibn Tufayl is best remembered for his philosophical story Hayy b. Yaqzān, about a young man growing up alone on a desert island and finding wisdom for himself, a book that has been widely translated and commented on and was one of the earliest classical Arabic texts to be translated into English, by Edward Pococke at Oxford in 1671.

Ibn Rushd, known in the western tradition as Averroes, was born in 1126. He came from an old family of religious scholars and jurists from Córdoba and was introduced as a young man to the caliph by Ibn Tufayl. When he first met Abū Ya‘qub he was given a sort of interview in which the caliph asked such questions as whether the sky has existed throughout all eternity of whether it had a beginning. Encouraged by Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd went on to display his immense philosophical and religious learning. The caliph was impressed and encouraged the young scholar to comment on and explain the texts of Aristotle, which he himself had difficulty in understanding. He also appointed him qādī of Seville and later Córdoba, offices which, Ibn Rushd complained, kept him away from his books. The death of Abū Ya‘qūb and the accession of Mansūr in 1184 led to a change of atmosphere at court. The new caliph’s main concern was the jihād against the Christians and later in his reign he responded to demands in conservative circles that Ibn Rushd’s kind of philosophical speculation should be forbidden. Ibn Rushd was summoned to a sort of inquisition before the chief jurists of Córdoba and his work was condemned and his books ordered to be burned, though he himself was unharmed and simply exiled to the little town of Lucena. In the end he retired to Marrakesh where he was free to return to his writing and where he died in 1198.

Ibn Rushd is an important figure in his own right because of the advances he made in the understanding of and commenting on Aristotle; but his influence was mainly felt in western Europe, while as a thinker he was largely neglected in Andalus where the caliphal patronage of intellectual life died in the chaotic circumstances of the thirteenth century. Even before his death, his works were being translated into Latin, usually at the city of Toledo, by now of course under Christian rule, where scholars from northern Europe came down to take advantage of the new Arabic learning. The writings of Ibn Rushd also had a major impact on the teaching of philosophy and logic in the newly developing universities of Paris, Oxford and Salamanca. Such characteristically ‘Averroist’ ideas as the eternal existence of the world and the possibility of attaining true happiness in this world, by philosophical contemplation of course, led to Averroism being linked to atheism and as such condemned by the Church for much the same reasons as it was attacked by rigorist Muslims. On the other hand, in Dante’s Divine Comedy he, like other non-Christian sages, escapes the Inferno and spends his eternity in Limbo.

The detailed philosophical arguments need not concern us here. The flow of ideas from classical Greek to Arabic in Abbasid Baghdad in the ninth century, and their flourishing in Almohad Andalus in the twelfth, brought them to the attention of western scholars long before translations directly from the Greek were available in the fifteenth century. In terms of philosophy, medicine and science, Averroism had a profound influence on the intellectual history of Christendom. This kind of intellectual enquiry, if not always initiated by the caliphs themselves, was at least given crucial support by men like the Abbasids Mansūr and Ma’mūn and the Almohad Abū Ya‘qūb Yūsuf.

We should remember the great caliphs of the Almohad dynasty for all sorts of reasons, and the encouragement of enlightened learning and the defence of philosophers and others against their enemies are not the least of these.