Muhammad ibn `Abdun al-Jabali[^10] travelled to the East in 347/952...

Muhammad ibn `Abdun al-Jabali[^10] travelled to the East in 347/952, studied logic with Abu Sulaim Muhammad ibn Tahir ibn Bahrain al-Sijistani, and returned to Spain in 360/965. Similarly, Ahmad and 'Umar, . the two sons of Yunus al-Barrani, entered Baghdad in 330/935, studied sciences with Thabit ibn Sinan ibn Thabit ibn Qurrah, and after a considerable period returned to Spain in 351/95611.

[^11] This is evident that philo­sophy was imported into the West from the East and that in the fourth/ tenth century Spanish students studied mathematics, Hadith , Tafsir , and Fiqh as well as logic and other philosophical sciences at Baghdad, Basrah, Damas­cus, and Egypt.

But from the end of the fourth/tenth century, when philo­sophy and logic were condemned in Spain and the advocates of these sciences were persecuted, the common people stopped favouring these sciences as far down as the fifth and sixth/eleventh and twelfth centuries. This was the reason why Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Tufail, and Ibn Ruahd had to face persecution, imprisonment, and condemnation. Very few people in those days dared deal with rational sciences.

Among the predecessors of Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Hazm deserves special attention. Ibn Hazm occupies a very high place in theology and other religious sciences. His Kitab al-Fasl fi al-Milal w-al-Nihal is unique in that he has recorded the creeds and doctrines of the Christians, Jews, and others without displaying any prejudice. But in the domain of philosophy he has never been mentioned by any Spanish scholar side by side with the philosophers.

Maqqari records:[^12] “Ibn Habban and others say, Ibn Hazm was a man of Hadlth , jurisprudence, and polemics. He wrote many books on logic and philosophy in which he did not escape errors.” His Contemporaries For throwing light on the contemporary thinkers of Ibn Bajjah we have no earlier authority than his own disciple ibn al-Imam, through whom we have received information about his writings.

Al-Wazir Abu al- Hasan 'Ali ibn 'Abd al-`Aziz ibn al-Imam, a devoted disciple of Ibn Bajjah, preserved the latter's writings in an anthology to which he added an introduction of his own. That Ibn Bajjah was very fond of this disciple, a vizier, is apparent from the pre­amble of his letters addressed to him which are available in the said anthology as preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.[^13] In his introduction to the anthology, Ibn al-Imam says: “...