Note 166 — Chapter VIII · FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM1

So complete was now the defeat of the intellectual life in Western Islam that the ablest writer produced by the Arab race in the period of the Renaissance, Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332–1406), writes as a bigoted believer in revelation, though his writings on the science of history were the most philosophic since the classic period, being out of all comparison superior to those of the Christian chroniclers of his age.166 So rationalistic, indeed, is his method, relatively to his time, that it is permissible to suspect him of seeking to propitiate the bigots.167 But neither they nor his race in general could learn the sociological lessons he had it in him to teach. Their development was arrested for that period.