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WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
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that the Muwahhids, like the Murabits, were really Moroccan rulers, to whom Spain was a foreign province. It was whilst the Emir was in Spain and at Cordova, making ready for an attack upon the Christians, that Ibn Rushd was disgraced, and it seems probable that this was mainly a matter of policy, as the Emir, on the eve of a religious war, was desirous of proving his own strict orthodoxy by the public disapproval of one who had been rather too outspoken in his speculative theories. As soon as the Emir returned to Morocco the order of exile was revoked, and later on Ibn Rushd appears at the court of Morocco, where he died in 595.

Amongst the Muslims Ibn Rushd has not exercised great influence; it was the Jews who supplied the bulk of his admirers, and they, scattered in Provence and Sicily by Muwahhid persecution, seem to have been chiefly instrumental in introducing him to Latin Christendom.

His chief medical work was known as the Kulliyat, "the universal," which, under the Latinized name of "colliget," became popular as a manual in the mediæval universities where the Arabic system of medicine was in use. He wrote also on jurisprudence a text-book of the law of inheritance, which is still extant in MS., and also produced works on astronomy and grammer. He maintained that the task of philosophy was one approved and commended by religion, for the Qur'an shows that God commands men to search for the truth. It is only the prejudice of the