Ibn Rushd better known in European literature as Averroes (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian Muslim polymath; a master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics and celestial mechanics. He was born in Córdoba, Al Andalus, modern-day Spain, and died in Marrakesh, modern-day Morocco. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. He has been described by some as the “one of the spiritual fathers of Europe,”
Averroes is a Latinate distortion of the actual Arab name Ibn Rushd.
Biography:
Averroes was born in Córdoba to a family with a long and well-respected tradition of legal and public service. His grandfather Abu Al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was chief judge of Córdoba under the Almoravids. His father, Abu Al-Qasim Ahmad, held the same position until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146.
Averroes’s education followed a traditional path, beginning with studies in Hadith, linguistics, jurisprudence and scholastic theology. Throughout his life he wrote extensively on Philosophy and Religion, attributes of God, origin of the universe, Metaphysics and Psychology. It is generally believed that he was perhaps once tutored by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace). His medical education was directed under Abu Jafar ibn Harun of Trujillo in Seville.
Averroes began his career with the help of Ibn Tufail (“Aben Tofail” to the West), the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and philosophic vizier of Almohad amir Abu Yaqub Yusuf. It was Ibn Tufail who introduced him to the court and to Ibn Zuhr (“Avenzoar” to the West), the great Muslim physician, who became Averroes’s teacher and friend. Averroes’s aptitude for medicine was noted by his contemporaries and can be seen in his major enduring work Kitab al-Kulyat fi al-Tibb (Generalities) the work was influenced by the Kitab al-Taisir fi al-Mudawat wa al-Tadbir (Particularities) of Ibn Zuhr. Averroes later reported how it was also Ibn Tufail that inspired him to write his famous commentaries on Aristotle:
Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl summoned me one day and told me that he had heard the Commander of the Faithful complaining about the disjointedness of Aristotle’s mode of expression — or that of the translators — and the resultant obscurity of his intentions. He said that if someone took on these books who could summarize them and clarify their aims after first thoroughly understanding them himself, people would have an easier time comprehending them. “If you have the energy,” Ibn Tufayl told me, “you do it. I’m confident you can, because I know what a good mind and devoted character you have, and how dedicated you are to the art. You understand that only my great age, the cares of my office — and my commitment to another task that I think even more vital — keep me from doing it myself.”
Averroes was also a student of Ibn Bajjah (“Avempace” to the West), another famous Islamic philosopher who greatly influenced his own Averroist thought. However, while the thought of his mentors Ibn Tufail and Ibn Bajjah were mystic to an extent, the thought of Averroes was purely rationalist. Together, the three men are considered the greatest Andalusian philosophers.
In 1160, Averroes was made Qadi (judge) of Seville and he served in many court appointments in Seville, Cordoba, and Morocco during his career. At the end of the 12th century, following the Almohads conquest of Al-Andalus, his political career was ended. Averroes’s strictly rationalist views which collided with the more orthodox views of Abu Yusuf Ya’qub al-Mansur who therefore eventually banished Averroes, though he had previously appointed him as his personal physician. Averroes was not reinstated until shortly before his death. He devoted the rest of his life (more than 30 years) to his philosophical writings, he died in the year 1198 AD.
Works:
Averroes’s works were spread over 20,000 pages covering a variety of different subjects, including early Islamic philosophy, logic in Islamic philosophy, Arabic medicine, Arabic mathematics, Arabic astronomy, Arabic grammar, Islamic theology, Sharia (Islamic law), and Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). In particular, his most important works dealt with Islamic philosophy, medicine and Fiqh. He wrote at least 67 original works, which included 28 works on philosophy, 20 on medicine, 8 on law, 5 on theology, and 4 on grammar, in addition to his commentaries on most of Aristotle’s works and his commentary on Plato’s The Republic.
He wrote commentaries on most of the surviving works of Aristotle. These were not based on primary sources (it is not known whether he knew Greek), but rather on Arabic translations. There were three levels of commentary: the Jami, the Talkhis and the Tafsir which are, respectively, a simplified overview, an intermediate commentary with more critical material, and an advanced study of Aristotelian thought in a Muslim context. The terms are taken from the names of different types of commentary on the Qur’an. It is not known whether he wrote commentaries of all three types on all the works: in most cases only one or two commentaries survive.
He did not have access to any text of Aristotle’s Politics. As a substitute for this, he commented on Plato’s The Republic, arguing that the ideal state there described was the same as the original constitution of the Arab Caliphate, as well as the Almohad state of Ibn Tumart.
Imaginary debate between Averroes and Porphyry. Monfredo de Monte Imperiali Liber de herbis, 14th century. 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). Al-Ghazali argued that Aristotelianism, especially as presented in the writings of Avicenna, was self-contradictory and an affront to the teachings of Islam. Averroes’ rebuttal was two-pronged: he contended both that al-Ghazali’s arguments were mistaken and that, in any case, the system of Avicenna was a distortion of genuine Aristotelianism so that al-Ghazali was aiming at the wrong target. Other works were the Fasl al-Maqal, which argued for the legality of philosophical investigation under Islamic law, and the Kitab al-Kashf, which argued against the proofs of Islam advanced by the Ash’arite school and discussed what proofs, on the popular level, should be used instead.
Averroes is also a highly regarded legal scholar of the Maliki school. Perhaps his best-known work in this field is Bidayat al-Mujtahid wa Nihayat al-Muqta?id, a textbook of Maliki doctrine in a comparative framework.
In medicine, Averroes wrote a medical encyclopedia called Kulliyat (“Generalities”, i.e. general medicine), known in its Latin translation as Colliget. He also made a compilation of the works of Galen (129-200) and wrote a commentary on The Law of Medicine (Qanun fi ‘t-tibb) of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980-1037).
Jacob Anatoli translated several of the works of Averroes from Arabic into Hebrew in the 13th century. Many of them were later translated from Hebrew into Latin by Jacob Mantino and Abraham de Balmes. Other works were translated directly from Arabic into Latin by Michael Scot. Many of his works in logic and metaphysics have been permanently lost, while others, including some of the longer Aristotelian commentaries, have only survived in Latin or Hebrew translation, not in the original Arabic. The fullest version of his works is in Latin, and forms part of the multi-volume Juntine edition of Aristotle published in Venice 1562-1574.
Contributions
Philosophy
Giovanni di Paolo’s St. Thomas Aquinas Confounding Averroës.See also: Averroism and The Incoherence of the Incoherence
According to Averroes, there is no conflict between religion and philosophy, rather that they are different ways of reaching the same truth. He believed in the eternity of the universe. He also held that the soul is divided into two parts, one individual and one divine; while the individual soul is not eternal, all humans at the basic level share one and the same divine soul. Averroes has two kinds of Knowledge of Truth. The first being his knowledge of truth of religion being based in faith and thus could not be tested, nor did it require training to understand. The second knowledge of truth is philosophy, which was reserved for an elite few who had the intellectual capacity to undertake this study.
The concept of “existence precedes essence”, a key foundational concept of existentialism, can also be found in the works of Averroes, as a reaction to Ibn Sina’s concept of “essence precedes existence”. Averroes’s most famous original philosophical work was The Incoherence of the Incoherence, a rebuttal to Al-Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers. In medieval Europe, his school of philosophy known as Averroism exerted a strong influence on Jewish philosophers such as Gersonides and Maimonides, and was opposed by Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas.
Astronomy:
At the age of 25, Averroes conducted astronomical observations near Marrakech, Morocco, during which he discovered a previously unobserved star.
In astronomical theory, Averroes rejected the eccentric deferents introduced by Ptolemy. He rejected the Ptolemaic model and instead argued for a strictly concentric model of the universe. He wrote the following criticism on the Ptolemaic model of planetary motion:
“To assert the existence of an eccentric sphere or an epicyclic sphere is contrary to nature. […] The astronomy of our time offers no truth, but only agrees with the calculations and not with what exists.”
Averroes also argued that the Moon is opaque and obscure, and has some parts which are thicker than others, with the thicker parts receiving more light from the Sun than the thinner parts of the Moon. He also gave one of the first descriptions on sunspots.
Celestial mechanics:
In celestial mechanics, while discussing the celestial spheres, Averroes rejected John Philoponus’ ‘anti-Aristotelian’ solution to his refutation of Aristotelian celestial dynamics, and instead restored Aristotle’s law of motion by adopting the ‘hidden variable’ approach to resolving apparent refutations of parametric laws that posits a previously unaccounted variable and its value(s) for some parameter, thereby modifying the predicted value of the subject variable. For, he posited a non-gravitational, previously unaccounted, inherent resistance to motion, as hidden within the celestial spheres. This was a non-gravitational inherent resistance to motion of superlunary quintessential matter, whereby R > 0 even when there is neither any gravitational, nor any media resistance, to motion.
Hence, in refuting the prediction of Aristotelian celestial dynamics:
[ (i) v a F/R & (ii) F > 0 & (iii) R = 0 ] entail v is infinite
the alternative logic of Averroes’ solution was to reject its third premise “R = 0” instead of rejecting its first premise as Philoponus had.
Thus Averroes most significantly revised Aristotle’s law of motion “v a F/R” into “v a F/M” for the case of celestial motion with his auxiliary theory of what may be called celestial inertia M, whereby R = M > 0. But Averroes restricted inertia to celestial bodies and denied sublunar bodies have any inherent resistance to motion other than their gravitational (or levitational) inherent resistance to violent motion, just as in Aristotle’s original sublunar physics.
However, Thomas Aquinas, also a student of Aristotelianism, rejected this denial of sublunar inertia and extended Averroes’ innovation in the celestial physics of the spheres to all sublunar bodies. He posited all bodies universally have a non-gravitational inherent resistance to motion constituted by their magnitude or mass. In his Systeme du Monde, the pioneering historian of medieval science Pierre Duhem, stated:
“For the first time we have seen human reason distinguish two elements in a heavy body: the motive force, that is, in modern terms, the weight; and the moved thing, the corpus quantum, or as we say today, the mass. For the first time we have seen the notion of mass being introduced in mechanics, and being introduced as equivalent to what remains in a body when one has suppressed all forms in order to leave only the prime matter quantified by its determined dimensions. Saint Thomas Aquinas’s analysis, completing Ibn Bajja’s, came to distinguish three notions in a falling body: the weight, the mass, and the resistance of the medium, about which physics will reason during the modern era….This mass, this quantified body, resists the motor attempting to transport it from one place to another, stated Thomas Aquinas.”
Some five centuries after Averroes’ and Aquinas’ innovations, it was Johannes Kepler who first dubbed this non-gravitational inherent resistance to motion in all bodies universally ‘inertia’. Hence the crucial notion of 17th century early classical mechanics of a resistant force of inertia inherent in all bodies was born in the heavens of medieval astrophysics, in the Aristotelian physics of the celestial spheres, rather than in terrestrial physics or in experiments.
However, having discounted the possibility of any resistance due to a contrary inclination to move in any opposite direction or due to any external resistance, in concluding their impetus was therefore not corrupted by any resistance, Jean Buridan also discounted any inherent resistance to motion in the form of an inclination to rest within the spheres themselves, such as the inertia posited by Averroes and Aquinas. For otherwise, that resistance would destroy their impetus, as the anti-Duhemian historian of science Annaliese Maier maintained the Parisian impetus dynamicists were forced to conclude, because of their belief in an inherent inclinatio ad quietem (tendency to rest) or inertia in all bodies. But in fact, contrary to that inertial variant of Aristotelian dynamics, according to Buridan, prime matter does not resist motion.
Law and jurisprudence:
As a Qadi (judge), Averroes wrote the Bidayat al-Mujtahid wa Nihayat al-Muqtasid, a Maliki legal treatise dealing with Sharia (law) and Fiqh (jurisprudence) which, according to Al-Dhahabi in the 13th century, was considered the best treatise ever written on the subject. Averroes’s summary the opinions (fatwa) of previous Islamic jurists on a variety of issues has continued to influence Islamic scholars to the present day, notably Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. While Averroes himself claimed that women in Islam were equal to men in all respects and possessed equal capacities to shine in peace and in war, he summarized the opinions of previous jurists and Imams on the status of women’s testimony in Islam as follows:
“There is a general consensus among the jurists that in financial transactions a case stands proven by the testimony of a just man and two women on the basis of the verse: ‘If two men cannot be found then one man and two women from among those whom you deem appropriate as witnesses’. However; in cases of Hudud, there is a difference of opinion among our jurists. The majority say that in these affairs the testimony of women is in no way acceptable whether they testify alongside a male witness or do so alone. The Zahiris on the contrary maintain that if they are more than one and are accompanied by a male witness, then owing to the apparent meaning of the verse their testimony will be acceptable in all affairs. Imam Abu Hanifah is of the opinion that except in cases of Hudud and in financial transactions their testimony is acceptable in bodily affairs like divorce, marriage, slave-emancipation and raju‘ [restitution of conjugal rights]. Imam Malik is of the view that their testimony is not acceptable in bodily affairs. There is however a difference of opinion among the companions of Imam Malik regarding bodily affairs which relate to wealth like advocacy and will-testaments which do not specifically relate to wealth.
Consequently, Ash-hab and Ibn Majishun accept two male witnesses only in these affairs, while to Malik Ibn Qasim and Ibn Wahab two female and a male witness are acceptable. As far as the matter of women as sole witnesses is concerned, the majority accept it only in bodily affairs, about which men can have no information in ordinary circumstances like the physical handicaps of women and the crying of a baby at birth.”
He also discussed Islamic economic jurisprudence, particularly the concept of Riba (usury). He reported that Ibn ‘Abbas, a sahaba (companion) of Muhammad, did not accept Riba al-Fadl (interest in excess) because, according to him, the Prophet Muhammad had clarified that there was no Riba except in credit. He also discussed the role of Islamic criminal jurisprudence in the Islamic dietary laws in regards to the consumption of alcohol. He stated that physical punishment for alcoholic consumption was not originally established as part of the Sharia in Muhammad’s time but was later decided by the Shura (consultive council) of the Rashidun Caliphate. He wrote:
“The general opinion in this regard is based on the consultation of ‘Umar (rta) with the members of his Shura. The session of this Shura took place during his period when people started indulging in this habit more frequently. ‘Ali (rta) opined that, by analogy with the punishment of Qadhf, its punishment should also be fixed at eighty stripes. It is said that while presenting his arguments, he had remarked: ‘When he [– the criminal –] drinks, he will get intoxicated and once he gets intoxicated, he will utter nonsense; and once he starts uttering nonsense, he will falsely accuse other people’.”
Logic:
Averroes was the last major Muslim logician from Al-Andalus. He is known for writing the most elaborate commentaries on Aristotelian logic.
Medicine:
As a physician, Averroes wrote twenty treatises on Arabic medicine, including a seven-volume medical encyclopedia entitled Kitabu’l Kulliyat fi al-Tibb (General Rules of Medicine), better known as Colliget in Latin. This encyclopedic work was completed at some time before 1162 and elaborated on physiology, general pathology, diagnosis, materia medica, hygiene and general therapeutics. He argued that no one can suffer from smallpox twice, and fully understood the function of the retina. He improved on Alhazen’s Book of Optics (1021) which, though providing a largely correct optical theory on vision, incorrectly assumed the lens of the eye to be the organ of sight. Averroes corrected this by showing that sight is the function of the retina.
His Colliget was largely overshadowed by the earlier medical encyclopedias, Continents by Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi (Rhazes) and The Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sina (Avicenna). As a result, Averroes’ fame as a physician was eclipsed by his own fame as a philosopher. His Kulliyat was translated into Latin by the Jewish translator Bonacosa in the late 13th century and again by Syphorien Champier in circa 1537, and it was also translated into Hebrew twice. Max Meyerhof notes that the prototypes for the physician-philosophers that predominated in Spain were “Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) and Averroes (Averroes)”.
Averroes discussed the topic of human dissection and autopsy. Although he never undertook human dissection, he was aware of it being carried out by some of his contemporaries, such as Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), and appears to have supported the practice. Averroes stated that the “practice of dissection strengthens the faith” due to his view of the human body as “the remarkable handiwork of God in his creation.” Despite his criticism of Al-Ghazali’s theological views, Averroes agreed with him on the issue of anatomy and dissection, and wrote:
“Whoever has been occupied with the science of anatomy/dissection (tashrfh) has increased his belief in God.”
In urology, Averroes identified the issues of sexual dysfunction and erectile dysfunction, and was among the first to prescribe medication for the treatment of these problems. He used several methods of therapy for this issue, including the single drug method where a tested drug is prescribed, and a “combination method of either a drug or food.” Most of these drugs were oral medication, though a few patients were also treated through topical or transurethral means.
In neurology and neuroscience, Averroes suggested the existence of Parkinson’s disease, and in ophthalmology and optics, he was the first to attribute photoreceptor properties to the retina. In his Colliget, he was also the first to suggest that the principal organ of sight might be the arachnoid membrane (aranea). His work led to much discussion in 16th century Europe over whether the principal organ of sight is the traditional Galenic crystalline humour or the Averroist aranea, which in turn led to the discovery that the retina is the principal organ of sight.
Physics:
In Averroes’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, he commented on the theory of motion proposed by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) in Text 71, and also made his own contributions to physics, particularly mechanics. Averroes was the first to define and measure force as “the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body” and the first to correctly argue “that the effect and measure of force is change in the kinetic condition of a materially resistant mass.” It seems he was also the first to introduce the notion that bodies have a (non-gravitational) inherent resistance to motion into physics, subsequently first dubbed ‘inertia’ by Johannes Kepler. But he only attributed it to the superlunary celestial spheres, and in order to explain why they do not move with infinite speed as was predicted by the application of Aristotle’s general law of motion v a F/R to celestial motion, given the assumption that the spheres have movers and thus F > 0, but no resistance to their motion, whereby R = 0.
John Philoponus had earlier rejected Aristotle’s theory of motion because of this celestial empirical refutation in favour of his alternative theory v a F – R that avoided it because v is finite even when R = 0 and when F > 0 and is finite. But contra Philoponus, Averroes restored it by positing inertia instead, whereby R > 0 even in the absence of any external resistance to motion and of any inherent gravitational resistance, as in the quintessential heavens in Aristotelian cosmology. But Averroes denied sublunar bodies have inertia, and it was Thomas Aquinas, also a student of Aristotelianism, who extended this inherent force to terrestrial bodies as well, thus also rejecting Aristotle’s prediction that the speed of gravitational fall of all bodies in a vacuum would be infinite because there would be no resistance to motion in the absence of an external resistant medium (i.e. R = 0). For Aristotle had assumed the only inherent resistance to motion in bodies is that of gravity, without which bodies would not inherently resist any motion, and which does not resist gravitational (i.e. ‘natural’) motion where it acts as the motor rather than as a brake as it does in violent motion. The Averroes-Aquinas notion of inertia was eventually adopted by Kepler, but not by scholastic Aristotelian impetus dynamics nor Galileo Galilei who maintained like Jean Buridan, for example, that prime matter does not inherently resist any motion and so is indifferent to motion or rest. It eventually became the central concept of Newton’s dynamics in its notion of the inherent force of inertia in all bodies, with the minor revision that the force of inertia resists all motion except for uniform straight motion, a purely fictitious ideal motion whose perseverance it would cause. But Newton’s inherent force of inertia resists all actual motion, given it is all accelerated motion in the Newtonian cosmos populated by many gravitationally attractive massive bodies. Thus on this analysis Averroes is creditable with one of the two most crucial innovations in the history of the development of Aristotelian dynamics into Newtonian dynamics, namely its two auxiliary notions of the force of impetus and of the force of inertia.
Politics:
Averroes did not have access to any text of Aristotle’s Politics. As a substitute for this, he commented on Plato’s The Republic, arguing that the ideal state there described was the same as the original constitution of the Islamic Caliphate, as well as the Almohad state of Ibn Tumart. He also believed that a wise philosopher should be commander and chief of a nation.
Averroes also claimed that women were equal to men in all respects and possessed equal capacities to shine in peace and in war, citing examples of female warriors among the Arabs, Greeks and Africans to support his case. In Muslim history, examples of notable female Muslims who fought as soldiers or generals included Nusaybah Bint k’ab Al Maziniyyah, Aisha, Kahula and Wafeira, and Um Umarah.
Psychology:
H. Chad Hillier writes the following on Averroes’s contributions to psychology:
There is evidence of some evolution in Averroes’s thought on the intellect, notably in his Middle Commentary on De Anima where he combines the positions of Alexander and Themistius for his doctrine on the material intellect and in his Long Commentary and the Tahafut where Averroes rejected Alexander and endorsed Themistius’ position that “material intellect is a single incorporeal eternal substance that becomes attached to the imaginative faculties of individual humans.” Thus, the human soul is a separate substance ontologically identical with the active intellect; and when this active intellect is embodied in an individual human it is the material intellect. The material intellect is analogous to prime matter, in that it is pure potentiality able to receive universal forms. As such, the human mind is a composite of the material intellect and the passive intellect, which is the third element of the intellect. The passive intellect is identified with the imagination, which, as noted above, is the sense-connected finite and passive faculty that receives particular sensual forms. When the material intellect is actualized by information received, it is described as the speculative (habitual) intellect. As the speculative intellect moves towards perfection, having the active intellect as an object of thought, it becomes the acquired intellect. In that, it is aided by the active intellect, perceived in the way Aristotle had taught, to acquire intelligible thoughts. The idea of the soul’s perfection occurring through having the active intellect as a greater object of thought is introduced elsewhere, and its application to religious doctrine is seen. In the Tahafut, Averroes speaks of the soul as a faculty that comes to resemble the focus of its intention, and when its attention focuses more upon eternal and universal knowledge, it becomes more like the eternal and universal. As such, when the soul perfects itself, it becomes like our intellect.
Averroes succeeded in providing an explanation of the human soul and intellect that did not involve an immediate transcendent agent. This opposed the explanations found among the Neoplatonists, allowing a further argument for rejecting of Neoplatonic emanation theories. Even so, notes Davidson, Averroes’s theory of the material intellect was something foreign to Aristotle.
Significance:
Averroes, detail of the fresco The School of Athens by RaphaelIn the West, Averroes is most famous for commentaries on Aristotle’s works, most of which had been inaccessible to Latin Europe during the Early Middle Ages. Before 1100 only a few of Aristotle’s logical works had been translated into Latin by Boethius, although the entire extant Greek corpus was known in Byzantium. After Latin translations of Aristotle’s other works from Greek and Arabic were made in the 12th and 13th centuries , Aristotle became more influential on medieval European philosophy. Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle contributed to his growing influence in the medieval West.
In medieval Europe, Averroes’ school of philosophy, known as Averroism, exerted a strong influence on Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas and Jewish philosophers such as Gersonides and Maimonides. Despite negative reactions from Jewish Talmudists and the Christian clergy, Averroes’ writings were taught at the University of Paris and other medieval universities, and Averroism remained the dominant school of thought in Europe through to the 16th century.
Averroes’ argument in The Decisive Treatise provided a justification for the emancipation of science and philosophy from official Ash’ari theology, thus Averroism has been regarded as a precursor to modern secularism.
George Sarton, the father of the history of science, writes:
“Averroes was great because of the tremendous stir he made in the minds of men for centuries. A history of Averroism would include up to the end of the sixteenth-century, a period of four centuries which would perhaps deserve as much as any other to be called the Middle Ages, for it was the real transition between ancient and modern methods.”
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’ philosophical works had less influence on the medieval and early modern Islamic world than the contemporaneous Latin Christian world, as indicated by the fact many of them works did not survive in the original Arabic but rather in Latin and Hebrew translation. However, his works on specifically Islamic topics such as fiqh (Islamic law), which were not translated into Latin, naturally influenced the Islamic world rather than the West. His death coincides with a change in the culture of Al-Andalus. In his work Fasl al-Maqal (translated a. o. as The Decisive Treatise), he stresses the importance of analytical thinking as a prerequisite to interpret the Qur’an; this is in contrast to orthodox Ash’ari theology, where the emphasis is less on analytical thinking but on extensive knowledge of sources other than the Qur’an, i.e. the hadith.
Hebrew translations of his work also had a lasting impact on Jewish philosophy, in particular Gersonides, who wrote supercommentaries on many of the works. In the Christian world, his ideas were assimilated by Siger of Brabant and Thomas Aquinas and others (especially in the University of Paris) within the Christian scholastic tradition which valued Aristotelian logic. Famous scholastics such as Aquinas believed him to be so important they did not refer to him by name, simply calling him “The Commentator” and calling Aristotle “The Philosopher.” 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. It has been a primary source in medieval political philosophy. On the other hand he was feared by many Christian theologians, who accused him of advocating a “double truth” and denying orthodox doctrines such as individual immortality, and an underground mythology grew up stigmatising him as the ultimate unbeliever; these accusations were largely based on misunderstandings of his work.
A later importation of Averroism into Europe is associated with the University of Padua in the early Renaissance, important names being Zabarella, Cremonini and Niphus.
Cultural influences:
Commentarium magnum Averrois in Aristotelis De Anima libros. French manuscript, third quarter of the 13th centuryReflecting the respect which medieval European scholars paid to him, Averroes is named by Dante in The Divine Comedy with the 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. He is briefly mentioned in the novel Ulysses by James Joyce alongside Maimonides. He appears to be waiting outside the walls of the ancient city of Cordoba in Alamgir Hashmi’s poem In Cordoba. He is also the main character in Destiny, a Youssef Chahine film. The Muslim pop musician Kareem Salama composed and performed a song in 2007 titled Aristotle and Averroes.
Averroes is also the title of a play called “The Gladius and The Rose”, written by Tunisian writer Mohamed Ghozzi, and which had the first price in the theater festival in Charjah in 1999.
The asteroid “8318 Averroes” was named in his honor.
A movie depicting the life and times of Averroes was released in 1998, titled Destiny (1997 film).