given to metaphysics and the other half to dogmatics. At-Taftazani is another name worthy of mention. He died in 791, after a laborious life as a controversialist and commentator. When we reach Ibn Khaldun (d. 808), the first philosophical historian and the greatest until the nineteenth century of our era, we find that kalam has fallen again from its high estate. It has become a scholastic discipline, useful only to repel the attacks of heretics and unbelievers; and of heretics, says Ibn Khaldun, there are now none left. Reason, he goes on, cannot grasp the nature of God; cannot weigh His unity nor measure His qualities. God is unknowable and we must accept what we are told about Him by His prophets. Such was the result of the destruction of philosophy in Islam.

CHAPTER V

Islam in the West; Ibn Tumart and the Muwahhids; philosophy in the West under Muwahhid protection; Ibn Bajja; Ibn Tufayi; Ibn Rushd; Ibn Arabi; Ibn Sab'in.

WE have now anticipated one of the strangest and most characteristic figures and movements in the history of Islam. The preceding account, except as relates to Ibn Khaldun, has told of the triumphs of the Ash'arites in the East only. In the West the movement was slower, and to it we must now turn. The Maghrib—the Occident, as the Arabs called all North Africa beyond Egypt—had been slow from the first to take on the Muslim impress. The invading army had fought its way painfully through, but the Berber tribes remained only half subdued and one-tenth Islamized. Egypt was conquered in A.H. 20, and Samarqand had been reached in 56; but it was not till 74 that the Muslims were at Carthage. And even then and for long after there arose insurrection after insurrection, and the national spirit of the Berbers remained unbroken. Broadly, but correctly, Islam in North Africa for more than three centuries was a failure. The tribal constitutions of the Berbers were unaffected by the conception of the Khalifate and their primitive religious aspirations by the Faith of Muhammad. Not till the possibility came to them to construct Muslim states out of their own tribes