Although Averroës worked as a judge both in Seville and Córdova, philosophy was his true love and his obsession. According to one story, during a party attended by the Almohad prince Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, he got into a heated debate over the origin and nature of reality and its relation to the human mind. Apparently, Averroës' stand-up lecture on Aristotle's account of existence and the nature of the soul lasted all night until sunrise, with apparently no one falling asleep. The prince appointed him as his personal physician and commissioned Averroës to write an entire set of new commentaries. Averroës spent the rest of his life doing so. Because of his radical criticism of the work of other commentators, claiming that they corrupted Aristotle's views by putting a theological spin to them, as soon as his princely protector, Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, died, Averroës was accused of promoting the 'pagan' philosophy of the ancients and thereby using philosophy to corrupt the Muslim faithful. As a result, he spent his remaining years in Morocco, writing and teaching in exile.
Five centuries had passed since Justinian had tried to ban philosophy from Christendom; now it was Islam's turn. The caliph al-Mansur ordered all books on logic and metaphysics burned. He issued an edict that declared anyone who believed in reason, and that truth can be known rationally, independently of any divine revelation, a heretic. Eventually the war between the Christians and Muslims forced the Muslims out of Spain, but the censorship of Averroës by the orthodox Islamic rulers continued. Strange as it may seem, just as previous Islamic authorities welcomed works banned by their Christian enemies, the new, conquering Christians seized the works banned by the Muslims, among which were translations of texts they themselves had once burned! Philosophy thus passed hands from one opposing religion to another and then back again, in what no doubt has to be one of the greatest historical ironies of all time.
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