The Decline of Andalusian Philosophy and Its Diaspora

The gradual eclipse of philosophy as an actively pursued discipline in al-Andalus itself resulted from a convergence of political, religious, and military pressures over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rather than any single decisive event. The Almohad dynasty, which had displaced the more religiously flexible Almoravids and ruled al-Andalus and the Maghreb from the 1140s until its own fragmentation after its decisive military defeat by a coalition of Christian kingdoms at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, pursued a doctrinally rigorist religious policy under its founder Ibn Tumart that combined, somewhat paradoxically, patronage of court philosophers such as Ibn Tufayl and Averroes with periodic and severe crackdowns on philosophical teaching perceived as threatening to religious orthodoxy, culminating in the public burning of Averroes's books and his temporary exile around 1195 under Caliph Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur.