Document Type

Contribution to Book

Language

eng

Format of Original

21 p.

Publication Date

2005

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Source Publication

The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy

Source ISSN

0521817439

Original Item ID

doi: 10.1017/CCOL0521817439.009

Abstract

Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd (ca. 1126-98), who came to be known in the Latin West as Averroes, was born at Cordoba into a family prominent for its expert devotion to the study and development of religious law (shar'ia). In Arabic sources al-Hafid (“the Grandson”) is added to his name to distinguish him from his grandfather (d. 1126), a famous Malikite jurist who served the ruling Almoravid regime as qadi (judge) and even as imam (prayer leader and chief religious authority) at the magnificent Great Mosque which still stands today in the city of Averroes' birth and where Averroes himself served as Grand Qadi (chief judge). When the governing regime changed with the success of 'Abd al-Mu'min (r. 1130-63), founder of the Almohad (al-Muwahhidun) dynasty, the members of the family continued to flourish under a new religious orientation based on the teachings of the reformer, al-Mah. di ibn Tumart (d. ca. 1129-30). Although insistent on the strict adherence to religious law, Ibn Tumart's teachings were at the same time equally insistent on the essential rationality of human understanding of the existence and unity (tawhid) of God and his creation as well as the rationality of the Qur'an and its interpretation.

Comments

Published version. "Averroes: Religious Dialectic and Aristotelian Philosophical Thought," in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Eds. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005: 180-200. DOI. © 2005 Cambridge University Press. Used with permission.

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