[1] See the story of Atahulphus, Bishop of Compostella, and the bull—­Alfonso of Burgos, ch. 66:  a man swallowed up by the earth—­Mariana, viii. 4:  Sancho the Great’s arm withered and restored—­Ibid., c. 10:  a Sabellian heretic carried off by the devil in sight of a large congregation—­Isidore of Beja, sec. 69:  the miracle of the roses (1050)—­Mar. ix. 3.

    [2] Cardonne, i. p. 72.

    [3] Ibid, p. 38.

    [4] See Ockley.

    [5] Gibbon, “for such are the manufacture of every religion,”
    p. 115.

[6] See Geddes, Miscell.  Tracts, “an account of MSS. and relics found at Granada.”  But we must remember that these miraculous phenomena appear much earlier in the history of Islam than of Christianity.

    [7] Al Makkari, ii. 129; cp.  Conde, i. 355.

    [8] Conde, i. 317.

    [9] Cp.  Matt. v. 45:  Luke xiii. 4.

This independence of thought in Almundhir was perhaps an outcome of that philosophic spirit which first shewed itself in Spain in the reign of this Sultan’s predecessor.[1] The philosophizers were looked upon with horror by the theologians, who worked upon the people, so that at times they were ready to stone and burn the free-thinkers.[2] The works of Ibnu Massara, a prominent member of this school, were burnt publicly at Cordova;[3] and the great Almanzor, though himself, like the great Caesar, indifferent to such questions,[4] by way of gaining the support of the masses, was ready, or pretended to be ready, to execute one of these philosophers.  At length, with feigned reluctance, he granted the man’s life at the request of a learned faqui.[5]

Even among the Mohammedan “clergy”—­if the term be allowable—­there were Sceptics and Deists,[6] and others who followed the wild speculations of Greek philosophy.  Among the last of these, the greatest name was Averroes, or more correctly, Abu Walid ibn Roshd (1126-1198), who besides holding peculiar views about the human soul that would almost constitute him a Pantheist, taught that religion was not a branch of knowledge that could be systematised, but an inward personal power:[7] that science and religion could not be fused together.  Owing to his freedom of thought he was banished to a place near Cordova by Yusuf abu Yakub in 1196.  He was also persecuted and put into prison by Abdulmumen, son of Almansur,[8] for studying natural philosophy.  Another votary of the same forbidden science, Ibn Habib, was put to death by the same king.

    [1] Dozy, iii. 18.

    [2] Al Makk., i. 136, 141.  They were called Zendik or heretics
    by the pious Moslems.  See also Said of Toledo, apud Dozy, iii.
    109.

    [3] Al Makk., ii. 121.

[4] He was supposed to be in secret addicted to the forbidden study of Natural Science and Astrology.—­Al Makk., i. 141.  Yet he let the faquis make an “index expurgatorius” of books to be burnt.—­Dozy, iii. 115.  His namesake, Yakub Almansur (1184-1199), ordered all books on Logic and Philosophy to be burnt.

    [5] Dozy, iii. 261.