positions at court and in the civil service, and these favourable conditions seem to have prevailed until the time of the Muwahhids, for it does not appear that the Murabits, for all their fanaticism, took any measures against Christians or Jews.
Important amongst the Jews of the Umayyad period was Hasdai ben Shabrut (d. 360 or 380 A.H.), a physician under 'Abdu r-Rahman, who sent presents to Sora and Pumbaditha, and carried on a correspondence with Dosa, son of the Gaon Sa'id al-Fayyumi. Hitherto it had been the custom for the western Jews to refer all difficult problems of the canon law to the learned of the academies in Mesopotamia, just as their Muslim neighbours referred to the East for guidance in jurisprudence and theology. But Hasdai took advantage of the accidental presence of Moses Ben Enoch in Cordova to found a native Spanish academy for rabbinical studies there, and appointed Moses its president, a step which received the warm approval of the Umayyad prince. This turned out to be more important than its founder had anticipated; it was not merely a provincial school reproducing the work of the eastern academies, but resulted in the transference of Jewish scholarship to Spain. At that time Asiatic Islam was beginning to feel the restricting power of the orthodox reaction, whilst Spain, on the other hand, saw the opening of a golden age. Shortly before this date the Umayyad Hakim II. had been working to encourage Muslim scholarship in the west, and had sent his agents to purchase books
