Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

About this figure

Ibn Rushd, known in the Latin West as Averroes (1126-1198), was an Andalusian Muslim philosopher, jurist, and physician from Cordoba whose commentaries on Aristotle earned him such a reputation among later medieval scholars that he was often referred to simply as "the Commentator." Trained in Islamic law, medicine, and philosophy, Averroes served as a qadi, or judge, in Seville and later in his native Cordoba, and he also acted as a court physician to the Almohad rulers who governed Muslim Spain and North Africa during his lifetime.

At the urging of the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf, Averroes undertook an extensive project of writing commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle's surviving works, aiming to recover and clarify what he regarded as Aristotle's authentic philosophical positions. Once translated into Latin and Hebrew, these commentaries became a primary channel through which Aristotelian philosophy reached medieval European scholars, including Thomas Aquinas. Averroes also wrote original philosophical works defending the compatibility of philosophy and religious law, most notably the Decisive Treatise, and he composed a detailed rebuttal of the theologian al-Ghazali's earlier critique of philosophy, titled The Incoherence of the Incoherence.

Late in his life, amid a period of religious and political conservatism under the Almohad regime, Averroes fell out of favor and was banished for a time before eventually being restored to favor. He died in Marrakesh in 1198, and the philosophical current associated with his interpretation of Aristotle, known as Averroism, continued to provoke controversy among Christian scholastics in Europe for generations afterward.

Written by Epoch Voices. Not the figure’s own words.