Yusuf b. Tashfin was the champion now invited by the Muslims of Spain, not without misgivings in many quarters, but the choice seemed to lie only between Christian or Berber, and the Berbers were at least of their own religion and of the same race as the majority of the Spanish Muslims. Yusuf came as a helper, but a second time invited he stayed on and established his authority over the country, and thus Spain became a province under the rule of the Murabit princes of Morocco. Yusuf was succeeded by `Ali, who was successful in restraining the Christians, and at one time even formed plans to drive them out of Spain altogether.
Murabit rule, which lasted 35 years, brought many changes and itself experienced many changes. The rulers were rough men of uncouth manners and fanatical outlook. Not many years before, it will be remembered, the Arabs of Kairawan were reluctant to venture into their land, such was their ill repute. They were partially humanised by a religious movement, and thus naturally show a religious character which bordered on fanaticism. `Ali himself was entirely in the hands of the faqirs or mendicant devotees and qadis, and the government was liable to interference from these irresponsible fanatics at every turn. It was a state of affairs which awakened the impatience of the cultured Muslims of Spain, who expressed their feelings in many caustic epigrams and satirical poems. But very soon a change began to work. The Murabits and their followers did not become less attached to the devotees, who swarmed unchecked on every side and received idolatrous attentions from the multitude, but they learned the luxuries and refinements of the cultured life then prevailing in Spain and showed themselves apt pupils. Indeed, their downfall may be explained either as due to effete luxury or to faqir-ridden superstition, as we shall see later on.
The intellectual life of Muslim Spain up to the Murabit period was conservative rather than backward. Its literary men were nearer the old traditional Arab type than was the case in the eastern Khalifate, where Persian influences had pushed the Arab so much into the background; its scholars were still occupied exclusively with the traditional sciences, exegesis, canon law, and traditions. The Murabit invasion offered a stimulus to satirical verse, but otherwise did nothing to promote either literature or science. Yet it is under Murabit rule that we find the first beginnings of western philosophy, and the line of transmission is from the Mu`tazilites of Baghdad through the Jews and thence to the Muslims of Spain. The Jews act as intermediaries who bring the Muslim philosophy of Asia into contact with the Muslims of Spain.
For a long time the Jews had taken no part in the development of Hellenistic philosophy, although in the latter Syriac period they had participated in medical studies and in natural science, of which we have seen evidence in the important work of Jewish physicians and scientists at Baghdad under al-Ma´mun and the early `Abbasids. Outside medicine and natural science Jewish interest seems to have been mainly confined to Biblical exegesis, tradition, and canon law.
One of the few exceptions to this restriction of interests was Sa`id al-Fayyumi or Saadya ben Joseph (d. 331 A.H. = 942 A.D.), a native of Upper Egypt, who became one of the Geonim of the academy at Sora on the Euphrates, and is best known as the translator of the Old Testament into Arabic, which had now replaced Aramaic as the speech of the Jews both in Asia and in Spain. As an author his most important work was the Kitab al-Amanat wa-l-´Itiqadat, or “Book of the articles of faith and dogmatics,” which was finished in 321-2 (= A.D. 933), and was afterwards translated into Hebrew as Sefer Emunot we-De´ot by Judah b. Tibbon. He was the author also of a commentary on the Pentateuch, of which only a portion (on Exod. 30, 11-16) survives, as well as other works; but it is in the first-named and in the commentary that his views appear most clearly. For the first time a Jewish writer shows familiarity with the problems raised by the Mu`tazilites, and gives these a serious attention from the Jewish stand-point. It does not seem, however, that we should class Sa`id as a Mu`tazilite; he more properly represents the movement which produced his Muslim contemporaries, al-Ash`ari and al-Mataridi, that is to say, he is one of those who use orthodox kalam and adapt philosophy to apologetic purposes. His position is shown most clearly in the “Book of the articles of faith and dogmatics” in dealing with the three problems of (a) creation, (b) the Divine Unity, and (c) free will. In the first of these he defends the doctrine of a creation ex nihilo, but in giving proofs of the necessity of a creator he shows in three out of the four arguments employed distinct traces of Aristotelian influences. In treating the doctrine of the Divine Unity he is chiefly concerned with opposing the Christian teaching of the Trinity, but incidentally is compelled to deal with the idea of God and the Divine attributes, and in doing so maintains that none of the Aristotelian categories can be applied to God. As to the human will he defends its freedom, and his task is mainly an effort to reconcile this with the omnipotence and omniscience of God. In the fragment on Exodus he refers to the commands of revelation and the commands of reason, these latter, he asserts, being based on philosophical speculation.
Evidently the Mutakallamin movement, professedly an orthodox reaction from the Mu`tazilites, represents a great widening of philosophical influences. Philosophy was no longer a subject confined to one group of scholars who were interested in Greek writings, but had spread out until it reached the mosques, and could no longer be thrust aside as an heretical aberration, and in its outspread it had penetrated the Jewish schools as well. But Sa`id produced no immediate disciples, and those who followed him in the Jewish academies of Mesopotamia showed no interest in his methods. Yet his work, apparently barren, was destined to have results of the widest importance after a century’s interval. In spite of distance and the difficulties of travel there was a very close and frequent intercourse maintained between all the Jews of the Sefardi group, those, namely, who had adopted Arabic as their ordinary speech and who were living under Muslim rule. The Ashkenazi Jews in the north and centre of Europe who lived in Christian lands and did not use Arabic were definitely separated from these others by the barrier of language, and thus in different surroundings the two groups developed marked differences in their use of Hebrew, in their liturgical formularies, and in their popular beliefs and folk-lore. Thus we must bear in mind that a synagogue in Spain would naturally be in close touch with synagogues in Mesopotamia, but it was not likely to have any contact with one in the Rhine valley.
Although the earlier Jewish settlers in Spain and Provence had enjoyed considerable freedom, restrictions had been imposed by the council of Elvira (A.D. 303-4), and they had to suffer considerable severity under the later West Goths. The coming of the Muslims had greatly eased their position, chiefly because the Jews had taken a leading part in assisting and probably in inviting the invaders; they often furnished garrisons to occupy towns which the Muslims had conquered, and were the means of supplying them with information as to the enemy’s movements. It seems probable that they had been in correspondence with the Muslims beforehand, so that they shared with Witiza’s partisans the responsibility of inviting the invasion. Under Umayyad rule their prosperity continued and increased. Very often we find Jews occupying high positions at court and in the civil service, and these favorable conditions seem to have prevailed until the time of the Muwahhids, for it does not appear that the Murabits, for all their fanaticism, took any measures against Christians or Jews.
Important amongst the Jews of the Umayyad period was Hasdai ben Shabrut (d. 360 or 380 A.H.), a physician under `Abdu r-Rahman, who sent presents to Sora and Pumbaditha, and carried on a correspondence with Dosa, son of the Gaon Sa`id al-Fayyumi. Hitherto it had been the custom for the western Jews to refer all difficult problems of the canon law to the learned of the academies in Mesopotamia, just as their Muslim neighbours referred to the East for guidance in jurisprudence and theology. But Hasdai took advantage of the accidental presence of Moses Ben Enoch in Cordova to found a native Spanish academy for rabbinical studies there, and appointed Moses its president, a step which received the warm approval of the Umayyad prince. This turned out to be more important than its founder had anticipated; it was not merely a provincial school reproducing the work of the eastern academies, but resulted in the transference of Jewish scholarship to Spain. At that time Asiatic Islam was beginning to feel the restricting power of the orthodox reaction, whilst Spain, on the other hand, saw the opening of a golden age. Shortly before this date the Umayyad Hakim II. had been working to encourage Muslim scholarship in the west, and had sent his agents to purchase books in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Alexandria. In the reactionary age of Mahmud of Ghazna (388-421) Muslim b. Muhammad al-Andalusi had been instrumental in introducing the teachings of the “Brethren of Purity” to the Muslims of Spain. We cannot say that the Jews anticipated the Muslims of Spain in their study of philosophy, but it is clear that the Jews were associated with the first dawn of the new learning in Spain, and thus as the sun was setting in the East a new day was beginning to break in the West.
The first leader of Spanish philosophy was the Jew Abu Ayyub Sulayman b. Yahya b. Jabirul (d. 450 A.H. = 1058 A.D.), commonly known as Ibn Gabirol (Jabirul), and hence “Avencebrol” in the Latin scholastic writers. He is chiefly known as the author of Maqor Chayim, “The Fountain of Life,” a title based on the words of Psalm 36, 10, which was one of the works translated into Latin at the college of Toledo and so well known to the scholastic writers as the Fons Vitae (ed. Baumer: Avencebrolis Fons Vitae, Münster, 1895). It was this work which really introduced neo-Platonism to the West. Ibn Jabirul teaches that God alone is pure reality, and He is the only actual substance; He has no attributes, but in Him are will and wisdom, not as possessed attributes but as aspects of His nature. The world is produced by the impress of form upon pre-existing universal matter. “Separate substances” in the sense of ideas abstracted from the things in which they exist (cf. Aristot. de anima. iii. 7, 8, “and so the mind when it thinks of mathematical forms thinks of them as separated, though they are not separated”) do not exist apart in reality; the abstracting is only a mental process, so the general idea exists only as a concept, not as a reality. But between the purely spiritual being of God and the crudely material observed in the bodies existing in this world are intermediate forms of existence, such as angels, souls, etc., wherein the form is not impressed upon matter.
Besides this “Fountain of Life” Ibn Gabirol was the author of two ethical treatises, the Tikkun Midwoth han-Nefesh, “the correction of the manners of the soul,” in which man is treated as a microcosm after the kabbalistic fashion; and Mibchar hap-Peninim, a collection of ethical maxims collected from the Greek and Arabic philosophers. The former has been published at Luneville in 1804, the latter at Hamburg in 1844.