Islam. 83lamic religion was going from strength to strength. Each re-
gion had its own capital, so that instead of one cultural centre
in Baghdad, there were now several. Cairo became a vital city
of art and learning under the Fatimids. Philosophy flourished
there and in the tenth century the caliphs founded the college
of al-Azhar, destined to become the most important Islamic
university in the world. Samarkand also saw a Persian literary
renaissance. One of its luminaries was the Faylasuf Abu Ali
ibn Sina (980-1037), who is known as Avicenna in the West.
Ibn Sina had been a disciple of al-Farabi, but took religion far
more seriously. In his view a prophet was the ideal philoso-
pher, not merely a purveyor of abstract rational truth for the
masses, because he had access to insights that did not depend
upon discursive thought. Ibn Sina was interested in Sufism,
and recognized that mystics attained an experience of the di-
vine that could not be reached by logical processes, but which
did cohere with Faylasuf notions. Both Falsafah and the faith
of the mystics and the conventionally pious were therefore in
harmony.
Cordova also experienced a cultural florescence, even
though the Umayyad caliphate in Spain had eventually col-
lapsed in 1010 and disintegrated into a number of rival, inde-
pendent courts. The Spanish renaissance was particularly
famous for its poetry, which resembled that of the French
troubadour courtly tradition. The Muslim poet Ibn Hazam
(994—1064) developed a simpler piety, which relied solely on
ahadith, and jettisoned complex fiqh and metaphysical philoso-
phy. Nevertheless, one of Spain's later intellectual stars was
the Faylasuf Abu al-Walid Ahmad ibn Rushd (1126-98), who
was less important in the Muslim world than the more mysti-
cally inclined Ibn Sina, but whose rationalistic thought influ-
enced such Jewish and Christian philosophers as Maimonides,
Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great. In the nineteenth cen-
tury the philologist Ernest Renan hailed Ibn Rushd (who is