 The reasons for the later development of philosophy in Muslim Al-Andalus, therefore, cannot be explained only by the fact that the country was situated far away from that nurturing source. The cause is likely that philosophy was never central to the Islamic intellectual constellation and that it flourished in peripheral areas, geographical as well as doctrinal. The greatest evidence is Ibn Sina (d. 1037) who lived in the Iranian provinces, never visited Baghdad and enjoyed the patronage of princes friendly to the Shiʻa. Al-Andalus was peripheral in geographical, but not in doctrinal, terms. The country followed Sunni orthodoxy and the Malekite school of law prevailed while Ash‛arite theology was weakly cultivated. When Abu l-Qasim Saʽid Ibn Saʽid (d. 1070) devoted a chapter of his world history of the sciences and philosophy to Al-Andalus, his information about philosophy was significantly scarce (Saʽid 1998: 96–108; 1991: 58–78).