84. Karen Armstrongknown in the West as Averroes) as a free spirit, an early cham-
pion of rationalism against blind faith. But in fact, Ibn Rushd
was a devout Muslim and a qadi judge of Shariah law. Like Ibn
Sina, he believed that there was no contradiction between re-
ligion and Falsafah, but that while religion was for everybody,
only an intellectual elite should attempt philosophy.
It seems that once the caliphate had been-for all practical
purposes - abandoned, Islam got a new lease of life. There
had always been tension between the ideals of absolute
monarchy and the Quran. The new polities that were emerg-
ing in the Islamic world by a process of trial and error were
closer to the Islamic vision. Not that all the new rulers were
pious Muslims-far from it-but the system of independent
courts and rulers, all on a par with one another but contained
within a loose notional unity, approximated more truly the
egalitarian spirit of the Quran. It was also in harmony with
the art that was emerging in the Muslim world at this period.
The arabesque does not give more emphasis to one letter than
to another; each character has its place and makes its unique
contribution to the whole. Muslim historians, such as Ibn
Ishaq and Abu Jafar al-Tabari (d. 923), made little attempt to
synchronize the sometimes conflicting traditions about the
Prophet's life, but simply juxtaposed rival versions, giving
each equal value. Muslims had accepted the caliphate be-
cause it guaranteed the unity of the ummah, but once the
caliphs showed that they could not integrate the empire any
longer, they were content to relegate them to symbolic status.
There was a change in Islamic piety. Hitherto, theology and
spirituality had nearly always been rooted in a political re-
sponse to the historical circumstances of the Muslim commu-
nity. But now that Muslims had more congenial political
arrangements, Muslim thought and devotion were less driven
by current events. Significantly, Islam became more political
again during the modern period, when Muslims faced new