Later on, he left for Granada, where occurred the incident referred to above.

Later on, he left for Granada, where occurred the incident referred to above. He then journeyed to north-west Africa. On his arrival at Shatibah, Ibn Bajjah was imprisoned by Amir Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yiisuf ibn Tashifin most probably on the charge of heresy, as Fath ibn Khaqan has it. But as Renan opines,[^4] he was set free, probably on the recommendation of his own disciple, father of the famous Spanish philosopher Ibn Rushd.

Later on, when Ibn Bajjah reached Fez, he entered the Court of the Governor, Abu Bakr Yahya ibn Yusuf ibn Tashifin, and rose to the rank of a vizier by dint of his ability and rare scholarship. He held this post for twenty years. This was the time of great troubles and turmoils in the history of Spain and north-west Africa. The governors of towns and cities proclaimed their independence. Lawlessness and chaos prevailed all over the country.

The rival groups and personalities accused one another of heresy to gain supremacy and to win the favour of the people. The enemies of Ibn Bajjah had already declared him a heretic and tried several times to kill him. But all their efforts proved a failure. Ibn Zuhr, the famous physician of the time, however, suc­ceeded in killing him by poison during Ramadan 533/1138 at Fez, where he was buried by the side of Ibn al'Arabi the younger.

His Predecessors There is no doubt that philosophy entered Spain after the third/ninth century. Some of the ancient manuscript copies of Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa available in Europe are ascribed to Maslamah ibn Abmad al-Majriti.[^5] Maslamah was a great mathematician in Spain. He flourished during the reign of Hakam II and died in 598/1003. [^6] Among his disciples, Ibn al-Safa, Zahrawi, Karmani, and Abu Muslim 'Umar ibn Abmad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami were famous for mathematical sciences.

Karmani and Ibn Khaldun were also known as philosophers. Ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami hailed from Seville and died in 449/1054. [^7] Karmani, whose full name is Abu al-Hakam 'Amr ibn 'Abd al-Rabman ibn Ahmad ibn 'Ali, hailed from Cordova, journeyed to the Eastern countries and studied medicine and arithmetic at Harran. On his return to Spain he settled at Saragossa. According to the statement of Qadi Sa`id[^8] and Maqqari,[^9] he was the first man who took the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa to Spain.

Karmani died at Saragossa in 450/1063. But philosophy had entered Spain long before the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa were introduced in that region.