therefore retired to Fez, but soon afterwards returned to Morocco. One day he met in the streets the Emir’s sister, who had adopted the shameless foreign custom of riding in public without a veil. The Mahdi stopped her and poured out a stream of abuse at her for this neglect of established custom, then, overcome by his indignation, he pulled her off the beast she was riding. He seems, however, to have felt some alarm at his own temerity and fled forthwith to Tinamel, where he openly raised the standard of revolt against a corrupt and unfaithful dynasty. At first this rebellion did not meet with much success, but, after the Mahdi’s death, the leadership fell to his pupil, `Abdu l-Mumin, who took Oran, Tlemsen, Fez, Sale, Ceuta, and in 542 became master of Morocco, and in due course seized all the empire of the Murabits. The new dynasty established by `Abdu l-Mumin is known by the name of the Muwahhids or “Unitarians,” a title which the Spanish historians render by “Almohades,” and their rule endured until 667 A.H. (= 1268 A.D.). Ibn Tumart professed to be a follower of al-Ghazali, and introduced his system of orthodox scholasticism to the West. In canon law he followed the reactionary school of Da´ud az-Zahiri and Ibn Hazm, like the Murabits who preceded him. To the multitude he was the champion of Berber nationality; he translated the Qur´an into the Berber language, and caused the call to prayer to be made in Berber instead of Arabic. Muwahhid rule introduced a period of bigotry and of religious persecution. It was under the rule of this dynasty that we find the Jews leaving the country in large numbers and migrating to Africa or to Provence, and many Christians also fled to join the Castilian forces in the north. Modern historians tend to condemn the later severities of Christian rulers towards their Muslim subjects, and often seem to speak of those subjects as the peaceable and cultured population which had lived under the Umayyads and the Murabits. But Spain’s last experience of the Muslims was of the fierce, bigoted, and persecuting Muwahhids, whose tone was very different. Strangely, however, it was under these intolerant rulers that Spanish Islam passed through its golden age of philosophical speculation, and not only so, but the philosophers were protected and favoured by the Muwahhid court. Quite early in this period the position seems to have been tacitly arranged that the philosophers were absolutely free in their work and teaching, provided that teaching was not spread abroad amongst the populace: it was to be regarded as a species of esoteric truth reserved for the enlightened. It seems almost certain that this attitude was deliberately arranged by the philosophers themselves; it had already been sketched out by some of the Asiatic writers, and definitely laid down by al-Ash`ari and al-Ghazali, and the Muwahhids, it must be remembered, professed to be Ghazalians. But whilst the philosophers enjoyed this exceptional