It is evident that such a solitary possessor of truth had two courses open to him. He could either busy himself in his studies and exercises, as had done Ibn Bajja and Ibn Tufayl, or he could boldly enter public life and trust to his dialectic ingenuity and resource—perhaps, also, to his plasticity of conscience—to carry him past all whispers of heresy and unbelief. The latter course was chosen by Ibn Rushd. He was born at Cordova, in 520, of a family of jurists and there studied law. From his legal studies only a book on the law of inheritance has reached us, and it, though frequently commented on, has never been printed. In 548 he was presented to Abu Ya‘qub by Ibn Tufayl and encouraged by him in the study of philosophy. In it his greatest work was done. In spite of the shreds and patches of neo-Platonism which clung to him, he was the greatest mediæval commentator on Aristotle. It is only part of the eternal puzzle of the Muslim mind that the utility of Greek for a student of Aristotle seems never to have struck him. Thereafter he acted as judge in different places in Spain and was court physician for a short time in 578 to Abu Ya‘qub. In 575 he had written his tractates, to which we shall come immediately, mediating between philosophy and theology. Toward the end of his life he was condemned by Abu Yusuf al-Mansur for heresy and banished from Cordova. This was in all likelihood a truckling on the part of al-Mansur to the religious prejudices of the people of Spain, who were probably of stiffer orthodoxy than the Berbers. He was in Spain, at Cordova, at the time, and was engaged in carrying on a religious war with the Christians. On his return to Morocco the decree of exile was recalled and Ibn Rushd restored to favor. We find him again at the court in Morocco, and he died there in 595.