The most famous of the mediaeval Islamic philosophers, born in Córdoba, S Spain. He was a judge successively at Córdoba, Seville, and in Morocco, and wrote on jurisprudence and medicine. In 1182 he became court physician to Caliph Abu Yusuf, but in 1185 was banished in disgrace (for reasons now unknown) by the caliph's son and successor. Many of his works were burnt, but after a brief period of exile he was restored to grace and lived in retirement at Marrakesh until his death. The most important of his works were the Commentaries on Aristotle, many of them known only through their Latin (or Hebrew) translations, which greatly influenced later Jewish and Christian writers and offered a partial synthesis of Greek and Arabic philosophical traditions.
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Middle Eastern Philosophers Medieval Philosophy |
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|---|---|
| Averroes | |
| Name: | Averroes |
| Birth: | 1126 (Cordoba, Al-Andalus) |
| Death: | 10 December 1198 (Marrakech, Morocco) |
| School/tradition: | Maliki |
| Main interests: | Islamic theology, Islamic law, Mathematics, Medicine |
| Notable ideas: | Reconciliation of Aristotelianism with Islam |
| Influences: | Aristotle, Muhammad |
| Influenced: | Siger de Brabant, Boetius of Dacia, Thomas Aquinas |
Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian-Arab philosopher and physician, a master of philosophy and Islamic law, mathematics, and medicine. In Arabic (the language in which he wrote), his name is Abul Walid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd أبو الوليد محمد بن احمد بن محمد بن احمد بن احمد بن رشد or just Ibn Rushd.
Biography
Averroes came from a family of Maliki legal scholars; It was Ibn Tufail ("Abubacer" to the West), the philosophic vizier of Almohad Caliph Yusef al-Mansur, who introduced Averroes to the court and to Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr), the great Muslim physician; In 1160 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was made Qadi of Seville and he served in many court appointments in Seville and Cordoba, and in Morocco during his career. His most important original philosophical work was The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahafut al-tahafut), in which he defended Aristotelian philosophy against al-Ghazali's claims in The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), himself arguing against the earlier Aristotelian, Avicenna, that it was self-contradictory and an affront to the teachings of Islam.
Romanced biography of Averroes: The Destiny from Youssef Chahine
System of philosophy
Averroes tried to reconcile Aristotle's system of thought with Islam.
Significance
Averroes is most famous for his translations and commentaries of Aristotle's works, which had been mostly forgotten in the West. It was through the Latin translations of Averroes's work beginning in the 12th century that the legacy of Aristotle was recovered in the West.
Averroes's work on Aristotle spans almost three decades, and he wrote commentaries on almost all of Aristotle's work except for Aristotle's Politics, to which he did not have access. Averroes also greatly influenced philosophy in the Islamic world.
Averroes's treatise on Plato's Republic has played a major role in both the transmission and the adaptation of the Platonic tradition in the West.
Averroes was one of those who predicted the existence of a new world beyond the Atlantic Ocean.
Jurisprudence and law
Averroes is also a highly-regarded legal scholar of the Maliki school.
Cultural influences
Reflecting the respect which medieval European scholars paid to him, Averroes is named by Dante in The Divine Comedy with the other great pagan philosophers whose spirits dwell in "the place that favor owes to fame" in Limbo.
Averroes appears in a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, entitled "Averroes's Search", in which he is portrayed trying to find the meanings of the words tragedy and comedy.
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