Averroes was the most eminent philosopher of Islam , in whom the Arabic Aristotelian tradition culminates and whose commentaries on the works of Aristotle exerted considerable influence on Christian medieval scholasticism. The 12th century Córdoba, where the philosopher was born, was still the intellectual capital of Muslim Spain, united under the Almohads and far from the episodes of the Taifa kingdoms. Relations between this rich region and North Africa had been strengthened in the previous century and were now reaching their peak.
Averroeslifedata
1126 He is born in Cordoba.
1169 He is appointed qadi of Seville.
1171 He is qadi from his hometown.
1182 Physician to the Sultan of Marrakesh.
1198 Died in Marrakesh
Abu-l-Walid Muhammad b. Ahmad ibn Rusd, whom the Latins knew as Averroes , was born in 1126 in Córdoba , at that time the intellectual capital of Arab culture based in the Iberian Peninsula. He belonged to a family of jurists; his grandfather had been a qadi, a Koranic judge, and imam of the great mosque of Cordoba, and his father was also a qadi. He himself received a very careful legal training thanks to which he was appointed qadi of Seville in 1169 , going on to perform, two years later, the same position in his hometown. In addition to Koranic jurisprudence, he also studied theology, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine.
A doctor-philosopher
As a physician, Averroes's most important work was an encyclopedic treatise in seven books, written before 1162, in which he fell short of showing himself to be a truly exceptional author. However, medicine played an important role in his career for two sets of reasons:on the one hand, it was through this profession that his close relationship with the religious and cultural politics of the Almohads was established; on the other hand, there is no doubt that the study of that science opened the way for him to become familiar with Greek thought through Galen. In 1169, his teacher and friend Ibn Tufayl, known in the Latin world as Abentofail or Abubacer —and who, along with Avicenna and Averroes himself, is one of the most notable examples of the importance of the figure of the philosopher physician in the scope of the intellectual activity of Islam—, presented it to the sultan of Marrakech, Abu Yaqub Yusuf, of whom Abentofail was chamber doctor. The sultan, an enlightened prince, argued with Averroes about the eternity of the substance of which the heavens are made, which provided the thinker with the opportunity to exhibit the extent to which he possessed an extensive knowledge of Aristotelian teachings. The result of that episode must have been the comments to Aristotle, to which Averroes owes his great philosophical fame, which began as a fulfillment of a wish of the sultan that Abentofail delegated to his disciple Averroes because of his advanced age. him.
Averroes retained the sultan's favor throughout his reign and in 1182 became his chief physician, replacing Abentofail . He distributed his time between fulfilling his obligations as a qadi and preparing his works, several of which are dated in Córdoba, thus subjecting him to a professional schizophrenia that he repeatedly complains about. In 1184 the sultan was succeeded by his son, who continued to shower Averroes with honors and provide him with material benefits. But in 1195 the threat of Christian armies seems to have forced the sultan to make some concessions to the fanatical orthodoxy of the Malikites, in whose eyes Averroes appeared excessively liberal; His opponents forced his exile in Lucena, near Córdoba, and his books were thrown at the stake . He was soon, however, in favor at court, and in 1198 he was recalled to Marrakesh, where he died later that year . Later, his remains were transferred to Córdoba.
Averroes's liberalism was encrypted, for his detractors, in the criticism he carried out of the official line of thought established by Algazali (Abu Hamid Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Gazzali) with his harsh attack on the "philosophers"; that is, those who, like Alfarabí (Abu Nasr Muhammad b. Tarjan b. Uzlug al-Farabi) or Avicenna, had followed the Greek doctrines of Plato or Aristotle, seeking their agreement with the teachings of Islam. Like his predecessors, Averroes also set out to reconcile religion and philosophy, although from the perspective of strict Aristotelian fidelity and opposing Avicenna on all issues that confronted Aristotle with Plato. The success of Averroes' approaches, by distinguishing between the truth of philosophers and that of believers, surely contributed to the orthodox fighting his ideas fiercely.
As for Averroes's comments on Aristotle, it was in the Christian and Jewish world that they reached the greatest publicity, quickly making him an authority, although at the price of distorting him. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the work of Aristotle made its
entry into the University of Paris at the hands of Averroes, and immediately exerted a great seduction for his ability to renew the sciences, but also disturbing for its numerous and flagrant contradictions with Christian doctrine. Throughout the century, some of the Averroist theses were the object of various condemnations, and Saint Albert the Great and Saint Thomas Aquinas made an effort to purge Aristotelian thought of its Averroist formulation (even when what is often refuted is not Averroes original, but the altered version of one of his supporters).
In Christianity, Averroism took on an increasingly revolutionary aspect, a proclamation of free thought, of the supremacy of reason over faith and dogma; to the point that, passing from the sphere of theological and philosophical ideas to the sphere of practical life, it became a symbol of disbelief and immorality. Paradoxical destiny for a thinker who, even judging that beliefs had to follow science to its limits, always affirmed that faith was capable of going further than reason.