# Why did Ibn Rushd fall from favour with the caliph?

*Ibn Rushd, part 2: why he fell from grace, a storm and 'the king of the Berbers'*

- URL: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/hv-blbvtr4m/s/28/
- Date: 2021-01-19 · Kind: lesson · Transcript tier: machine · Recording: Monday Nights with Mufti #198 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth (2:08:59–2:16:37)
- Status: general teaching
- Watch from the start of the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv-BlBVTr4M&t=7739s
- Recording page: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/hv-blbvtr4m/

**Topics:** Al-Andalus and the Maghrib; Race, nation and identity

**Summary (not a quotation; machine-made, unchecked):** Mufti Abu Layth relates two accounts of Ibn Rushd's fall, a remark on a storm and an insult to the caliph, and finds the first believable though unproven.

**Checked position (checked by two independent reviews, not by the channel):** Mufti Abu Layth says he is not sure the report that Ibn Rushd doubted the reality of a Quranic story is true, but that it is believable he said such things because his views were very philosophical.

**Evidence, his words at 2:10:51:** “I'm not sure whether that's true but it's believable that he could have said things because his views were kind of very philosophical” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv-BlBVTr4M&t=7851s)

## Longer summary

Mufti Abu Layth turns to the reasons given for Ibn Rushd's fall. In one account, when a great storm threatened Cordoba, an imam told people to repent because it was the second wind of its kind, like the one that struck a people in the Quran ['Ad?], and Ibn Rushd, a philosopher opposed to superstition, allegedly retorted that if that people were not even real, how could the wind that struck them be. Mufti says some take this to mean Ibn Rushd held some Quranic stories to be allegorical; he is not sure it is true but finds it believable, while saying Ibn Rushd did believe in the Quran. The other account is that his book on animals called the caliph 'king of the Berbers', a grave insult which Mufti explains through the second-class image Berbers had, comparing it to stereotypes of Pathans in South Asia, and through the vast extent of Almohad rule, to which even Salah al-Din appealed for help. Ibn Rushd reportedly pleaded a copyist's slip, saying he had written 'king of the two continents' [?].

## Sources and names cited

- Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
- Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur [?]
- Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi

## Transcript (machine tier, 2:08:59–2:16:37)

[2:08:20] it out here this this is this is it I mean it's it's called it's a commentary on Plato's Republic and he actually does a commentary the Islamic style you know where you bring a text and do a commentary like sentence for for sentence and um and this only survives because it was in Hebrew and then it was kind of translated back into Arabic but the Muslims kind of ignored it they they just felt that H you know this guy's a deviant and so on and he was a legend and he was accused you see some of the reasonings like they they wonder why did

[2:08:58] he um you know how did he kind of Fall From Grace so um you know how did events turn so rapidly against him and some people say they used statements he said against him and one of them was that you know in his time there was this uh IM called I so that's like a contemporary but anyway this one day in CA there's this storm so they find out a storm is coming like you know people say oh my God you know there's a tragic Storm's going to come these huge winds you know Mega kind

[2:09:37] of strong Gale forces and so they're really uh freaking out that this wind's going to come so one of the imams thisand he gathers people and says what we've got to do we got to kind of do a Toba he says because I he says this wind that's coming is the second of its kind that came and attacked the of in the Quran mulas that's man you know you give mulas a little story and they know how to run with it

[2:10:14] huh so you know so he's telling people this is a curse that's coming on us so R obviously a philosopher he's against Superstition and he was a Maliki major Maliki so he tells people that this is nonsense yeah uh that there's no uh um you know this is not the second of its kind that Afflicted so he gets into this heated argument like some people challenge him and one of them says something about and he says that he this is allegedly he made a

[2:10:51] statement saying look if weren't even real then how was the tornado that struck them real I've nourished you know he's the kind that kind that you could proper chill with so he uh they some people say he made that statement because he didn't believe that all the stories in the Quran were necessarily he believes some of them may have been allegorical just trying to give a message I'm not sure whether that's true but it's believable that he could have said things because his views were kind of very philosophical so they use this

[2:11:30] against him to tell the kff that he's a kafir he doesn't even believe in the Quran he did believe in the Quran but he believed that the Quran was there you see it's okay to have these kind of understandings for people that because this is what people need the other thing is he has a book on zoology on animals so in it he mentions the king so what people said to this King y they said to him that thiss is you in it and he refers to you as the king of the

[2:12:09] [Laughter] berbers ah you see the thing is the bber had a lot even till today today is for different reasons but the bber have suffered in from an identitarian perspective so they have um historically it's different today it's more political and about identity they try to suppress the bber language it's in mainly in Morocco and Algeria um so but in the past it wasn't the langu they weren't trying to suppress the language in the past but in the past they were seen

[2:12:47] sometimes like people saw Arabs as like more Superior because you know Arabs Arabs and bber were just like bber so they they they were kind of seen as second class uh not that people necessarily Des but it's just this it carried this thing even if it wasn't like let's say some this is totally wrong I'm just going to be racist and and say this but like for example in in the dii culture or especially the Pakistani culture the way they this is The Stereotype of the patan that this kind of person who

[2:13:25] doesn't think as much and he's kind of like hotheaded and he's not he's crude and he's not kind of um polished up on his manners and he's not like somebody that's seen as like very um you know he's seen as like this kind of crude almost like a rural lower class image of this person although they they is also seen as somebody incredibly Brave but this is the image that was very similar to the image of the barbar so you see you can imagine if imagine today there was a king from and he happened to be P but he ruled over

[2:14:04] entire because the the MU ruled over a third of Africa I mean that is bloody huge nobody ruled what the morab what the M ruled ever over that region over that continent they ruled two continents the Iberian Peninsula Portugal Spain the Bic Islands they ruled over North Africa not Egypt though but North Africa and in this guy y's time it was the greatest it ever reached even uh salahudin asks him for help I mean this is how powerful he was so you can imagine somebody if

[2:14:44] there's such a powerful King and you say oh he's calling you the king of the barbar you know it's like saying that somebody says they calling you the king of the pans but really you're even though you're just because you are Pon but because this person was bbar himself but really you rule over the entire Pakistan and India and this whole thing but somebody's just calling you that I mean that's a huge uh offense it was seen as uh so they brought I rush and I Rush tried to justify he said he said he did

[2:15:21] I have n he did one of his uh yeah oh funny thing that you know I I was trying to say he says no that's a spell that's a typo I wasn't saying I was saying because you see the ba looks like a yah and the ra can look a bit like a noon except if you just K C up more he said I was saying the Malik meaning the Malik of the two

[2:15:58] continents the you know the andus so he says I was saying the the king of the two continents not not the king of thebar Malik is like does it say ah he's like sorry am I is my name Abu YF y Al manur is Abu YF y uh Abu YF yob

[2:16:36] Al so he basically said so he uh that's why he kind of suffered massively but the man Rush was a legend uh some of his books he responds to razali gazali did attack all the philosophers he had this book which I did take out called and what rush does is he refutes that and calls it the half which was incoherence of the philosophers and he basically takes out these points and says based on them on these three

## Cite

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment Hv-BlBVTr4M/s/28. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/hv-blbvtr4m/s/28/

Not a fatwa: these answers were given to specific people at specific times. Ask a qualified scholar about your own situation.