Averroes - Wikipedia

Averroes - Wikipedia

Averroes

Article TalkLanguage
Download PDF
Watch
Edit


"Ibn Rushd " and "The Commentator" redirect here. For the center-right website of the same name, see Robin Shepherd § The Commentator. For other uses, see Commentator (disambiguation).

Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد; full name in Arabic: أبو الوليد محمد ابن احمد ابن رشد, romanized: Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rušd; 14 April 1126 – 11 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes (English: /əˈvɛroʊiːz/), was an Andalusian[1] polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises,[2][3] his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism.[4] Ibn Rushd also served as a chief judge and a court physician for the Almohad Caliphate.

Averroes
Ibn Rushd
ابن رشد

Statue of Ibn Rushd in Córdoba, Spain
Born 14 April 1126

Córdoba, Al-Andalus, Almoravid Empire
Died 11 December 1198 (aged 72)

Marrakesh, Maghreb, Almohad Caliphate
Other names Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad ibn Rushd
The Commentator

Era Medieval, Islamic Golden Age
Region Islamic philosophy
School Aristotelianism

Main interests Islamic theology, philosophy, Islamic jurisprudence, medicine, astronomy, physics, linguistics

Notable ideas Relation between Islam and philosophy, non-contradiction of reason and revelation, unity of the intellect

InfluencesAristotle, Plato, Socrates, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, Avempace, Ibn Tufail

InfluencedAl-Bitruji, Maimonides, Samuel ibn Tibbon, Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, Thomas Aquinas, John of Jandun, Marsilius of Padua, Gaetano da Thiene, Pietro Pomponazzi, Agostino Nifo, Marcantonio Zimara. See also Averroism.


Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ashari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. In Islamic jurisprudence, he wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid on the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles that caused their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and might have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries.

His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the west, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire. His thoughts generated controversies in Latin Christendom and triggered a philosophical movement called Averroism based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the best-known and most controversial Averroist doctrines in the west. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by condemnations and sustained critique from Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers up to the sixteenth century.

Contents


























NameEdit

Averroes in a 14th-century painting by Andrea di Bonaiuto
See also: Latinization of names

Ibn Rushd's full, transliterated Arabic name is "Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rushd".[5][6] Sometimes, the nickname al-Hafid ("The Grandson") is appended to his name, to distinguish him from his grandfather, a famous judge and jurist.[7] "Averroes" is the Medieval Latin form of "Ibn Rushd"; it was derived from the Spanish pronunciation of the original Arabic name, wherein "Ibn" becomes "Aben" or "Aven".[8] Other forms of the name in European languages include "Ibin-Ros-din", "Filius Rosadis", "Ibn-Rusid", "Ben-Raxid", "Ibn-Ruschod", "Den-Resched", "Aben-Rassad", "Aben-Rasd", "Aben-Rust", "Avenrosdy", "Avenryz", "Adveroys", "Benroist", "Avenroyth" and "Averroysta".[8]
BiographyEdit
Early life and educationEdit

Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd was born on 14 April 1126 (520 AH[5]) in Córdoba.[9][10] His family was well known in the city for their public service, especially in the legal and religious fields.[10] His grandfather Abu al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was the chief judge (qadi) of Córdoba and the imam of the Great Mosque of Córdoba under the Almoravids.[10][5] His father Abu al-Qasim Ahmad was not as celebrated as his grandfather, but was also chief judge until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146.[10]

According to his traditional biographers, Averroes's education was "excellent",[5] beginning with studies in hadith (traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad), fiqh (jurisprudence), medicine and theology. He learned Maliki jurisprudence under al-Hafiz Abu Muhammad ibn Rizq and hadith with Ibn Bashkuwal, a student of his grandfather.[5][11] His father also taught him about jurisprudence, including on Imam Malik's magnum opus the Muwatta, which Averroes went on to memorize.[12][13] He studied medicine under Abu Jafar Jarim al-Tajail, who probably taught him philosophy too.[14] He also knew the works of the philosopher Ibn Bajjah (also known as Avempace), and might have known him personally or been tutored by him.[10][11] He joined a regular meeting of philosophers, physicians and poets in Seville which was attended by philosophers Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zuhr as well as the future caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub.[13] He also studied the kalam theology of the Ashari school, which he criticized later in life.[14] His 13th century biographer Ibn al-Abbar said he was more interested in the study of law and its principles (usul) than that of hadith and he was especially competent in the field of khilaf (disputes and controversies in the Islamic jurisprudence).[14] Ibn al-Abbar also mentioned his interests in "the sciences of the ancients", probably in reference to Greek philosophy and sciences.[14]
CareerEdit

Averroes served various official positions in the Almohad Caliphate, whose territories are depicted in this map.

By 1153 Averroes was in Marrakesh (Morocco), the capital of the Almohad Caliphate, to perform astronomical observations and to support the Almohad project of building new colleges.[13][14] He was hoping to find physical laws of astronomical movements instead of only the mathematical laws known at the time but this research was unsuccessful.[14] During his stay in Marrakesh he likely met Ibn Tufayl, a renowned philosopher and the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan who was also the court physician in Marrakesh.[14][11] Averroes and ibn Tufayl became friends despite the differences in their philosophies.[15][11]

In 1169 Ibn Tufayl introduced Averroes to the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf.[16][14] In a famous account reported by historian Abdelwahid al-Marrakushi the caliph asked Averroes whether the heavens had existed since eternity or had a beginning.[16][14] Knowing this question was controversial and worried a wrong answer could put him in danger, Averroes did not answer.[16] The caliph then elaborated the views of Plato, Aristotle and Muslim philosophers on the topic and discussed them with Ibn Tufayl.[16][14] This display of knowledge put Averroes at ease; Averroes then explained his own views on the subject, which impressed the caliph.[14] Averroes was similarly impressed by Abu Yaqub and later said the caliph had "a profuseness of learning I did not suspect".[16]

After their introduction, Averroes remained in Abu Yaqub's favor until the caliph's death in 1184.[14] When the caliph complained to Ibn Tufayl about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's work, Ibn Tufayl recommended to the caliph that Averroes work on explaining it.[16][14] This was the beginning of Averroes's massive commentaries on Aristotle;[16] his first works on the subject were written in 1169.[16]

In the same year, Averroes was appointed qadi (judge) in Seville.[14][17] In 1171 he became qadi in his hometown of Córdoba.[14][12] As qadi he would decide cases and give fatwas (legal opinions) based on the Islamic law (sharia).[17] The rate of his writing increased during this time despite other obligations and his travels within the Almohad empire.[14] He also took the opportunity from his travels to conduct astronomical researches.[13] Many of his works produced between 1169 and 1179 were dated in Seville rather than Córdoba.[14] In 1179 he was again appointed qadi in Seville.[12] In 1182 he succeeded his friend Ibn Tufayl as court physician and later the same year he was appointed the chief qadi of Córdoba, a prestigious office that had once been held by his grandfather.[14][17]

In 1184 Caliph Abu Yaqub died and was succeeded by Abu Yusuf Yaqub.[14] Initially, Averroes remained in royal favor but in 1195 his fortune reversed.[14][16] Various charges were made against him and he was tried by a tribunal in Córdoba.[16][14] The tribunal condemned his teachings, ordered the burning of his works and banished Averroes to nearby Lucena.[14] Early biographers's reasons for this fall from grace include a possible insult to the caliph in his writings[16] but modern scholars attribute it to political reasons. The Encyclopaedia of Islam said the caliph distanced himself from Averroes to gain support from more orthodox ulema, who opposed Averroes and whose support al-Mansur needed for his war against Christian kingdoms.[14] Historian of Islamic philosophy Majid Fakhry also wrote that public pressure from traditional Maliki jurists who were opposed to Averroes played a role.[16]

After a few years, Averroes returned to court in Marrakesh and was again in the caliph's favor.[14] He died shortly afterwards, on 11 December 1198 (9 Safar 595 in the Islamic calendar).[14] He was initially buried in North Africa but his body was later moved to Córdoba for another funeral, at which future Sufi mystic and philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) was present.[14]
WorksEdit

Imaginary debate between Averroes and third-century philosopher Porphyry. Monfredo de Monte Imperiali Liber de herbis, 14th century
See also: List of works by Averroes

Averroes was a prolific writer and his works, according to Fakhry, "covered a greater variety of subjects" than those of any of his predecessors in the East, including philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence or legal theory, and linguistics.[18] Most of his writings were commentaries on or paraphrasings of the works of Aristotle that—especially the long ones—often contain his original thoughts.[19] According to French author Ernest Renan, Averroes wrote at least 67 original works, including 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.[20] Many of Averroes's works in Arabic did not survive, but their translations into Hebrew or Latin did.[21] For example, of his long commentaries on Aristotle, only "a tiny handful of Arabic manuscript remains".[22]
Commentaries on AristotleEdit

An Arabic illustration of Aristotle teaching a student, c. 1220. Aristotle's works are the subject of extensive commentaries by Averroes.

Averroes wrote commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle's surviving works.[18] The only exception is Politics, which he did not have access to, so he wrote commentaries on Plato's Republic.[18] He classified his commentaries into three categories that modern scholars have named short, middle and long commentaries.[22] Most of the short commentaries (jami) were written early in his career and contain summaries of Aristotlean doctrines.[19] The middle commentaries (talkhis) contain paraphrases that clarify and simplify Aristotle's original text.[19] The middle commentaries were probably written in response to his patron caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf's complaints about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's original texts and to help others in a similar position.[19][22] The long commentaries (tafsir or sharh), or line-by-line commentaries, include the complete text of the original works with a detailed analysis of each line.[23] The long commentaries are very detailed and contain a high degree of original thought,[19] and were unlikely to be intended for a general audience.[22] Only five of Aristotle's works had all three types of commentaries: Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, On the Heavens, and Posterior Analytics.[18]
Stand alone philosophical worksEdit

Averroes also wrote stand alone philosophical treatises, including On the Intellect, On the Syllogism, On Conjunction with the Active Intellect, On Time, On the Heavenly Sphere and On the Motion of the Sphere. He also wrote several polemics: Essay on al-Farabi's Approach to Logic, as Compared to that of Aristotle, Metaphysical Questions Dealt with in the Book of Healing by Ibn Sina, and Rebuttal of Ibn Sina's Classification of Existing Entities.[18]
Islamic theologyEdit

Scholarly sources, including Fakhry and the Encyclopedia of Islam, have named three works as Averroes's key writings in this area. Fasl al-Maqal ("The Decisive Treatise") is an 1178 treatise that argues for the compatibility of Islam and philosophy.[24] Al-Kashf 'an Manahij al-Adillah ("Exposition of the Methods of Proof"), written in 1179, criticizes the theologies of the Asharites,[25] and lays out Averroes's argument for proving the existence of God, as well as his thoughts on God's attributes and actions.[26] The 1180 Tahafut al-Tahafut ("Incoherence of the Incoherence") is a rebuttal of al-Ghazali's (d. 1111) landmark criticism of philosophy The Incoherence of the Philosophers. It combines ideas in his commentaries and stand alone works, and uses them to respond to al-Ghazali.[27] The work also criticizes Avicenna and his neo-Platonist tendencies, sometimes agreeing with al-Ghazali's critique against him.[27]
MedicineEdit

Title page from a Latin edition of Colliget, Averroes's main work in medicine

Averroes, who served as the royal physician at the Almohad court, wrote a number of medical treatises. The most famous was al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb ("The General Principles of Medicine", Latinized in the west as the Colliget), written around 1162, before his appointment at court.[28] The title of this book is the opposite of al-Juz'iyyat fi al-Tibb ("The Specificities of Medicine"), written by his friend Ibn Zuhr, and the two collaborated intending that their works complement each other.[29] The Latin translation of the Colliget became a medical textbook in Europe for centuries.[28] His other surviving titles include On Treacle, The Differences in Temperament, and Medicinal Herbs.[30] He also wrote summaries of the works of Greek physician Galen (died c. 210) and a commentary on Avicenna's Urjuzah fi al-Tibb ("Poem on Medicine").[28]
Jurisprudence and lawEdit

Averroes served multiple tenures as judge and produced multiple works in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence or legal theory. The only book that survives today is Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid ("Primer of the Discretionary Scholar").[31] In this work he explains the differences of opinion (ikhtilaf) between the Sunni madhhabs (schools of Islamic jurisprudence) both in practice and in their underlying juristic principles, as well as the reason why they are inevitable.[32] Despite his status as a Maliki judge, the book also discusses the opinion of other schools, including liberal and conservative ones.[31] Other than this surviving text, bibliographical information shows he wrote a summary of Al-Ghazali's On Legal Theory of Muslim Jurisprudence (Al-Mustasfa) and tracts on sacrifices and land tax.[33]
Philosophical ideasEdit
Aristotelianism in the Islamic philosophical traditionEdit

In his philosophical writings, Averroes attempted to return to Aristotelianism, which according to him had been distorted by the Neoplatonist tendencies of Muslim philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna.[34][35] He rejected al-Farabi's attempt to merge the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, pointing out the differences between the two, such as Aristotle's rejection of Plato's theory of ideas.[36] He also criticized Al-Farabi's works on logic for misinterpreting its Aristotelian source.[37] He wrote an extensive critique of Avicenna, who was the standard-bearer of Islamic Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages.[38] He argued that Avicenna's theory of emanation had many fallacies and was not found in the works of Aristotle.[38] Averroes disagreed with Avicenna's view that existence is merely an accident added to essence, arguing the reverse; something exists per se and essence can only be found by subsequent abstraction.[39] He also rejected Avicenna's modality and Avicenna's argument to prove the existence of God as the Necessary Existent.[40]

Averroes felt strongly about the incorporation of Greek thought into the Muslim world, and wrote that "if before us someone has inquired into [wisdom], it behooves us to seek help from what he has said. It is irrelevant whether he belongs to our community or to another".[41]
Relation between religion and philosophyEdit

During Averroes's lifetime, philosophy came under attack from the Sunni Islam tradition, especially from theological schools like the traditionalist (Hanbalite) and the Ashari schools.[42] In particular, the Ashari scholar al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111) wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), a scathing and influential critique of the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition in the Islamic world and against the works of Avicenna in particular.[43] Among others, Al-Ghazali charged philosophers with non-belief in Islam and sought to disprove the teaching of the philosophers using logical arguments.[42][44]

In Decisive Treatise, Averroes argues that philosophy—which for him represented conclusions reached using reason and careful method—cannot contradict revelations in Islam because they are just two different methods of reaching the truth, and "truth cannot contradict truth".[45][46] When conclusions reached by philosophy appear to contradict the text of the revelation, then according to Averroes, revelation must be subjected to interpretation or allegorical understanding to remove the contradiction.[45][42] This interpretation must be done by those "rooted in knowledge"—a phrase taken from the Quran, 3:7, which for Averroes refers to philosophers who during his lifetime had access to the "highest methods of knowledge".[45][46] He also argues that the Quran calls for Muslims to study philosophy because the study and reflection of nature would increase a person's knowledge of "the Artisan" (God).[47] He quotes Quranic passages calling on Muslims to reflect on nature and uses them to render a fatwa (legal opinion) that philosophy is allowed for Muslims and is probably an obligation, at least among those who have the talent for it.[48]

Averroes also distinguishes between three modes of discourse: the rhetorical (based on persuasion) accessible to the common masses; the dialectical (based on debate) and often employed by theologians and the ulama (scholars); and the demonstrative (based on logical deduction).[42][47] According to Averroes, the Quran uses the rhetorical method of inviting people to the truth, which allows it to reach the common masses with its persuasiveness,[49] whereas philosophy uses the demonstrative methods that were only available to the learned but provided the best possible understanding and knowledge.[49]

Averroes also tries to deflect Al-Ghazali's criticisms of philosophy by saying that many of them apply only to the philosophy of Avicenna and not to that of Aristotle, which Averroes argues to be the true philosophy from which Avicenna has deviated.[50]
Nature of GodEdit
ExistenceEdit

Averroes lays out his views on the existence and nature of God in the treatise The Exposition of the Methods of Proof.[51][52] He examines and critiques the doctrines of four sects of Islam: the Asharites, the Mutazilites, the Sufis and those he calls the "literalists" (al-hashwiyah).[52] Among other things, he examines their proofs of God's existence and critiques each one.[51] Averroes argues that there are two arguments for God's existence that he deems logically sound and in accordance to the Quran; the arguments from "providence" and "from invention".[51] The providence argument considers that the world and the universe seem finely tuned to support human life. Averroes cited the sun, the moon, the rivers, the seas and the location of humans on the earth.[51][53] According to him, this suggests a creator who created them for the welfare of mankind.[53][51] The argument from invention contends that worldly entities such as animals and plants appear to have been invented. Therefore, Averroes argues that a designer was behind the creation and that is God.[51] Averroes's two arguments are teleological in nature and not cosmological like the arguments of Aristotle and most contemporaneous Muslim kalam theologians.[54]
God's attributesEdit

Averroes upholds the doctrine of divine unity (tawhid) and argues that God has seven divine attributes: knowledge, life, power, will, hearing, vision and speech. He devotes the most attention to the attribute of knowledge and argues that divine knowledge differs from human knowledge because God knows the universe because God is its cause while humans only know the universe through its effects.[51]

Averroes argues that the attribute of life can be inferred because it is the precondition of knowledge and also because God willed objects into being.[55] Power can be inferred by God's ability to bring creations into existence. Averroes also argues that knowledge and power inevitably give rise to speech. Regarding vision and speech, he says that because God created the world, he necessarily knows every part of it in the same way an artist understands his or her work intimately. Because two elements of the world are the visual and the auditory, God must necessarily possess vision and speech.[51]

The omnipotence paradox was first addressed by Averroës[56] and only later by Thomas Aquinas.[57]
Pre-eternity of the worldEdit

In the centuries preceding Averroes, there had been a debate between Muslim thinkers questioning whether the world was created at a specific moment in time or whether it has always existed.[58] Neo-Platonic philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna argued the world has always existed.[59] This view was criticized by theologians and philosophers of the Ashari kalam tradition; in particular, al-Ghazali wrote an extensive refutation of the pre-eternity doctrine in his Incoherence of the Philosophers and accused the Neo-Platonic philosophers of unbelief (kufr).[59]

Averroes responded to Al-Ghazali in his Incoherence of the Incoherence. First, he argued that the differences between the two positions were not vast enough to warrant the charge of unbelief.[59] He also said the pre-eternity doctrine did not necessarily contradict the Quran and cited verses that mention pre-existing "throne" and "water" in passages related to creation.[60][61] Averroes argued that a careful reading of the Quran implied only the "form" of the universe was created in time but that its existence has been eternal.[60] Averroes further criticized the kalam theologians for using their own interpretations of scripture to answer questions that should have been left to philosophers.[62]
PoliticsEdit

Averroes states his political philosophy in his commentary of Plato's Republic. He combines his ideas with Plato's and with Islamic tradition; he considers the ideal state to be one based on the Islamic law (shariah).[63] His interpretation of Plato's philosopher-king followed that of Al-Farabi, which equates the philosopher-king with the imam, caliph and lawgiver of the state.[64][63] Averroes's description of the characteristics of a philosopher-king are similar to those given by Al-Farabi; they include love of knowledge, good memory, love of learning, love of truth, dislike for sensual pleasures, dislike for amassing wealth, magnanimity, courage, steadfastness, eloquence and the ability to "light quickly on the middle term".[64] Averroes writes that if philosophers cannot rule—as was the case in the Almoravid and Almohad empires around his lifetime—philosophers must still try to influence the rulers towards implementing the ideal state.[63]

According to Averroes, there are two methods of teaching virtue to citizens; persuasion and coercion.[65] Persuasion is the more natural method consisting of rhetorical, dialectical and demonstrative methods; sometimes, however, coercion is necessary for those not amenable to persuasion, e.g. enemies of the state.[65] Therefore, he justifies war as a last resort, which he also supports using Quranic arguments.[65] Consequently, he argues that a ruler should have both wisdom and courage, which are needed for governance and defense of the state.[66]

Like Plato, Averroes calls for women to share with men in the administration of the state, including participating as soldiers, philosophers and rulers.[67] He regrets that contemporaneous Muslim societies limited the public role of women; he says this limitation is harmful to the state's well-being.[63]

Averroes also accepted Plato's ideas of the deterioration of the ideal state. He cites examples from Islamic history when the Rashidun caliphate—which in Sunni tradition represented the ideal state led by "rightly guided caliphs"—became a dynastic state under Muawiyah, founder of the Umayyad dynasty. He also says the Almoravid and the Almohad empires started as ideal, shariah-based states but then deteriorated into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny.[63][68]
Diversity of Islamic lawEdit

In his tenure as judge and jurist, Averroes for the most part ruled and gave fatwas according to the Maliki school of Islamic law which was dominant in Al-Andalus and the western Islamic world during his time.[69] However, he frequently acted as "his own man", including sometimes rejecting the "consensus of the people of Medina" argument that is one of the traditional Maliki position.[70] In Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, one of his major contributions to the field of Islamic law, he not only describes the differences between various school of Islamic laws but also tries to theoretically explain the reasons for the difference and why they are inevitable.[71] Even though all the schools of Islamic law are ultimately rooted in the Quran and hadith, there are "causes that necessitate differences" (al-asbab al-lati awjabat al-ikhtilaf).[72][73] They include differences in interpreting scripture in a general or specific sense,[74] in interpreting scriptural commands as obligatory or merely recommended, or prohibitions as discouragement or total prohibition,[75] as well as ambiguities in the meaning of words or expressions.[76] Averroes also writes that the application of qiyas (reasoning by analogy) could give rise to different legal opinion because jurists might disagree on the applicability of certain analogies[77] and different analogies might contradict each other.[78][79]
Natural philosophyEdit
AstronomyEdit

As did Avempace and Ibn Tufail, Averroes criticizes the Ptolemaic system using philosophical arguments and rejects the use of eccentrics and epicycles to explain the apparent motions of the moon, the sun and the planets. He argued that those objects move uniformly in a strictly circular motion around the earth, following Aristotelian principles.[80] He postulates that there are three type of planetary motions; those that can be seen with the naked eye, those that requires instruments to observe and those that can only be known by philosophical reasoning.[13] Averroes argues that the occasional opaque colors of the moon are caused by variations in its thickness; the thicker parts receive more light from the Sun—and therefore emit more light—than the thinner parts.[81] This explanation was used up to the seventeenth century by the European Scholastics to account for Galileo's observations of spots on the moon's surface, until the Scholastics such as Antoine Goudin in 1668 conceded that the observation was more likely caused by mountains on the moon.[82] He and Ibn Bajja observed sunspots, which they thought were transits of Venus and Mercury between the Sun and the Earth.[83] In 1153 he conducted astronomical observations in Marrakesh, where he observed the star Canopus (Arabic: Suhayl) which was invisible in the latitude of his native Spain. He used this observation to support Aristotle's argument for the spherical Earth.[83]

Averroes was aware that Arabic and Andalusian astronomers of his time focused on "mathematical" astronomy, which enabled accurate predictions through calculations but did not provide a detailed physical explanation of how the universe worked.[84] According to him, "the astronomy of our time offers no truth, but only agrees with the calculations and not with what exists."[85] He attempted to reform astronomy to be reconciled with physics, especially the physics of Aristotle. His long commentary of Aristotle's Metaphysics describes the principles of his attempted reform, but later in his life he declared that his attempts had failed.[80][14] He confessed that he had not enough time or knowledge to reconcile the observed planetary motions with Aristotelian principles.[80] In addition, he did not know the works of Eudoxus and Callippus, and so he missed the context of some of Aristotle's astronomical works.[80] However, his works influenced astronomer Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji (d. 1204) who adopted most of his reform principles and did succeed in proposing an early astronomical system based on Aristotelian physics.[86]
PhysicsEdit

In physics, Averroes did not adopt the inductive method that was being developed by Al-Biruni in the Islamic world and is closer to today's physics.[47] Rather, he was—in the words of historian of science Ruth Glasner—a "exegetical" scientist who produced new theses about nature through discussions of previous texts, especially the writings of Aristotle.[87] because of this approach, he was often depicted as an unimaginative follower of Aristotle, but Glasner argues that Averroes's work introduced highly original theories of physics, especially his elaboration of Aristotle's minima naturalia and on motion as forma fluens, which were taken up in the west and are important to the overall development of physics.[88] Averroes also proposed a definition of force as "the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body"—a definition close to that of power in today's physics.[89]
PsychologyEdit

The Long Commentary on Aristotle's On the Soul, French Manuscript, third quarter of the 13th century

Averroes expounds his thoughts on psychology in his three commentaries on Aristotle's On the Soul.[90] Averroes is interested in explaining the human intellect using philosophical methods and by interpreting Aristotle's ideas.[90] His position on the topic changed throughout his career as his thoughts developed.[90] In his short commentary, the first of the three works, Averroes follows Ibn Bajja's theory that something called the "material intellect" stores specific images that a person encounters.[91] These images serve as basis for the "unification" by the universal "agent intellect", which, once it happens, allow a person to gain universal knowledge about that concept.[92] In his middle commentary, Averroes moves towards the ideas of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, saying the agent intellect gives humans the power of universal understanding, which is the material intellect.[92] Once the person has sufficient empirical encounters with a certain concept, the power activates and gives the person universal knowledge[92] (see also logical induction).

In his last commentary—called the Long Commentary—he proposes another theory, which becomes known as the theory of "the unity of the intellect". In it, Averroes argues that there is only one material intellect, which is the same for all humans and is unmixed with human body.[93] To explain how different individuals can have different thoughts, he uses a concept he calls fikr—known as cogitatio in Latin—a process that happens in human brains and contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" the person has encountered.[93] This theory attracted controversy when Averroes's works entered Christian Europe; in 1229 Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed critique titled On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists.[90][94]
MedicineEdit

6th-century Byzantine depiction of Galen (top centre) among other noted physicians

While his works in medicine indicate an in-depth theoretical knowledge in medicine of his time, he likely had limited expertise as a practitioner, and declared in one of his works that he had not "practiced much apart from myself, my relatives or my friends."[95][96] He did serve as a royal physician, but his qualification and education was mostly theoretical.[96] For the most part, Averroes's medical work Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb follows the medical doctrine of Galen, an influential Greek physician and author from the 2nd century, which was based on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, whose balance is necessary for the health of the human body.[97] Averroes's original contributions include his observations on the retina: he might have been the first to recognize that retina was the part of the eye responsible for sensing light, rather than the lens as was commonly thought.[97] Modern scholars dispute whether this is what he meant it his Kulliyat, but Averroes also stated a similar observation in his commentary to Aristotle's Sense and Sensibilia: "the innermost of the coats of the eye [the retina] must necessarily receive the light from the humors of the eye [the lens], just like the humors receive the light from air."[98]

Another of his departure from Galen and the medical theories of the time is his description of stroke as produced by the brain and caused by an obstruction of the arteries from the heart to the brain.[99] This explanation is closer to the modern understanding of the disease compared to that of Galen, which attributes it to the obstruction between heart and the periphery.[99] He was also the first to describe the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease in his Kulliyat, although he did not give the disease a name.[100]
LegacyEdit
Main article: Averroism
In Jewish traditionEdit

Maimonides (d. 1204) was among early Jewish scholars who received Averroes's works enthusiastically, saying he "received lately everything Averroes had written on the works of Aristotle" and that Averroes "was extremely right".[101] Thirteenth-century Jewish writers, including Samuel ibn Tibbon in his work Opinion of the Philosophers, Judah ibn Solomon Cohen in his Search for Wisdom and Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera, relied heavily on Averroes's texts.[101] In 1232, Joseph Ben Abba Mari translated Averroes's commentaries on the Organon; this was the first Jewish translation of a complete work. In 1260 Moses ibn Tibbon published the translation of almost all of Averroes's commentaries and some of his works on medicine.[101] Jewish Averroism peaked in the fourteenth century;[102] Jewish writers of this time who translated or were influenced by Averroes include Kalonymus ben Kalonymus of Arles, France, Todros Todrosi of Arles, Elia del Medigo of Candia and Gersonides of Languedoc.[103]
In Latin traditionEdit

Averroes's main influence on the Christian West was through his extensive commentaries on Aristotle.[104] After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, western Europe fell into a cultural decline that resulted in the loss of nearly all of the intellectual legacy of the Classical Greek scholars, including Aristotle.[105] Averroes's commentaries, which were translated into Latin and entered western Europe in the thirteenth century, provided an expert account of Aristotle's legacy and made them available again.[106][102] The influence of his commentaries led to Averroes being referred to simply as "The Commentator" rather than by name in Latin Christian writings.[22] He has been sometimes described as the "father of free thought and unbelief"[107][108] and "father of rationalism".[4]

Michael Scot (1175 – c. 1232) was the first Latin translator of Averroes who translated the long commentaries of Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On the Heavens, as well as multiple middle and short commentaries, starting in 1217 in Paris and Toledo.[109] Following this, European authors such as Hermannus Alemannus, William de Luna and Armengaud of Montpellier translated Averroes's other works, sometimes with help from Jewish authors.[110] Soon after, Averroes's works propagated among Christian scholars in the scholastic tradition.[110] His writing attracted a strong circle of followers known as the Latin Averroists.[110] Paris and Padua were major centers of Latin Averroism, and its prominent thirteenth-century leaders included Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia.[110]

Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church reacted against the spread of Averroism. In 1270, the Bishop of Paris Étienne Tempier issued a condemnation against 15 doctrines—many of which were Aristotelian or Averroist—that he said were in conflict with the doctrines of the church. In 1277, at the request of Pope John XXI, Tempier issued another condemnation, this time targeting 219 theses drawn from many sources, mainly the teachings of Aristotle and Averroes.[111]

The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas over Averroes by Benozzo Gozzoli, depicting Aquinas (top center), a major Averroes critic, "triumphing" over Averroes (bottom), depicted at the feet of Aquinas

Averroes received a mixed reception from other Catholic thinkers; Thomas Aquinas, a leading Catholic thinker of the thirteenth century, relied extensively on Averroes's interpretation of Aristotle but disagreed with him on many points.[112][22] For example, he wrote a detailed attack on Averroes's theory that all humans share the same intellect.[113] He also opposed Averroes on the eternity of the universe and divine providence.[114]

The Catholic Church's condemnations of 1270 and 1277, and the detailed critique by Aquinas weakened the spread of Averroism in Latin Christendom,[115] though it maintained a following until the sixteenth century, when European thought began to diverge from Aristotelianism.[102] Leading Averroists in the following centuries included John of Jandun and Marsilius of Padua (fourteenth century), Gaetano da Thiene and Pietro Pomponazzi (fifteenth century), and Agostino Nifo and Marcantonio Zimara (sixteenth century).[116]
In Islamic traditionEdit

Averroes had no major influence on Islamic philosophic thought until modern times.[117] Part of the reason was geography; Averroes lived in Spain, the extreme west of the Islamic civilization far from the centers of Islamic intellectual traditions.[50] Also, his philosophy may not have appealed to Islamic scholars of his time.[50] His focus on Aristotle's works was outdated in the twelfth-century Muslim world, which had already scrutinized Aristotle since the ninth century and by now was engaging deeply with newer schools of thought, especially that of Avicenna.[50] In the nineteenth century, Muslim thinkers begin to engage with the works of Averroes again.[117] By this time, there was a cultural renaissance called Al-Nahda ("reawakening") in the Arabic-speaking world and the works of Averroes were seen as inspiration to modernize the Muslim intellectual tradition.[117]
Cultural referencesEdit

Averroes, detail of the fresco The School of Athens by Raphael

References to Averroes appear in the popular culture of both the western and Muslim world. The poem The Divine Comedy by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri, completed in 1320, depicts Averroes, "who made the Great Commentary", along with other non-Christian Greek and Muslim thinkers, in the first circle of hell around Saladin.[118][112] The prolog of The Canterbury Tales (1387) by Geoffrey Chaucer lists Averroes among other medical authorities known in Europe at the time.[118] Averroes is depicted in Raphael's 1501 fresco The School of Athens that decorates the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which features seminal figures of philosophy. In the painting, Averroes wears a green robe and a turban, and peers out from behind Pythagoras, who is shown writing a book.[119]

Averroes is referenced briefly in Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame' (written 1831, but set in the Paris of 1482). The novel's villain, the Priest Claude Frollo, extols Averroes' talents as an alchemist in his obsessive quest to find the Philosophers Stone.[120]

A 1947 short story by Jorge Luis Borges, "Averroes's Search" (Spanish: La Busca de Averroes), features his attempts to understand Aristotle's Poetics within a culture that lacks a tradition of live theatrical performance.[121] In the afterwords of the story, Borges comments, "I felt that [the story] mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more material than a few snatches from Renan, Lane, and Asín Palacios."[122] Averroes is also the hero of the 1997 Egyptian movie Destiny by Youssef Chahine, made partly in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of his death.[119][123] The plant genus Averrhoa (whose members include the starfruit and the bilimbi[124]), the lunar crater ibn Rushd,[125] and the asteroid 8318 Averroes are named after him.[126]
ReferencesEdit
^ Tamer, Georges (1 February 2011). "Averroism". Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Averroism is a philosophical movement named after the sixth/twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595/1198), which began in the thirteenth century among masters of arts at the University of Paris and continued through the seventeenth century.
^ Juan Eduardo Campo, Encyclopedia of Islam, Infobase Publishing, 2009, p. 337
^ Caroline Stone (May/June 2003), "Doctor, Philosopher, Renaissance Man", Saudi Aramco World. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
^ a b Gill, John (2009). Andalucía : a cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 108–110. ISBN 978-0-19-537610-4.
^ a b c d e Arnaldez 1986, p. 909.
^ Rosenthal 2017.
^ Iskandar 2008, pp. 1115–1116.
^ a b Renan 1882, p. 7.
^ Selwood, Dominic (10 December 2017). "On this day in 1198: the Islamic philosopher Averroës dies in Marrakech". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
^ a b c d e Hillier, Biography.
^ a b c d Wohlman 2009, p. 16.
^ a b c Dutton 1994, p. 190.
^ a b c d e Iskandar 2008, p. 1116.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa Arnaldez 1986, p. 910.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 1.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Fakhry 2001, p. 2.
^ a b c Dutton 1994, p. 196.
^ a b c d e Fakhry 2001, p. 3.
^ a b c d e Taylor 2005, p. 181.
^ Ahmad 1994.
^ Adamson 2016, pp. 180–181.
^ a b c d e f Adamson 2016, p. 180.
^ McGinnis & Reisman 2007, p. 295.
^ Arnaldez 1986, pp. 911–912.
^ Arnaldez 1986, pp. 913–914.
^ Arnaldez 1986, pp. 914.
^ a b Arnaldez 1986, pp. 915.
^ a b c Fakhry 2001, p. 124.
^ Arnaldez 2000, pp. 28–29.
^ Arnaldez 2000, p. 28.
^ a b Fakhry 2001, p. xvi.
^ Dutton 1994, p. 188.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 115.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 5.
^ Leaman 2002, p. 27.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 6.
^ Fakhry 2001, pp. 6–7.
^ a b Fakhry 2001, p. 7.
^ Fakhry 2001, pp. 8–9.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 9.
^ Virani, Shafique N. (2011). "Taqiyya and Identity in a South Asian Community". The Journal of Asian Studies. 70 (1): 99–139. doi:10.1017/S0021911810002974. ISSN 0021-9118. S2CID 143431047. pp. 131–132.
^ a b c d Hillier, Philosophy and Religion.
^ Hillier, paragraph 2.
^ Leaman 2002, p. 55.
^ a b c Guessoum 2011, p. xx.
^ a b Adamson 2016, p. 184.
^ a b c Guessoum 2011, p. xxii.
^ Adamson 2016, p. 182.
^ a b Adamson 2016, p. 183.
^ a b c d Adamson 2016, p. 181.
^ a b c d e f g h Hillier, Existence and Attributes of God.
^ a b Fakhry 2001, p. 74.
^ a b Fakhry 2001, p. 77.
^ Fakhry 2001, pp. 77–78.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 79.
^ Averroës, Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) trans. Simon Van Den Bergh, Luzac & Company 1969, sections 529–536
^ Aquinas, Thomas Summa Theologica Book 1 Question 25 article 3
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 14.
^ a b c Fakhry 2001, p. 18.
^ a b Fakhry 2001, p. 19.
^ Hillier, Origin of the World.
^ Fakhry 2001, pp. 19–20.
^ a b c d e Rosenthal 2017, Contents And Significance Of Works.
^ a b Fakhry 2001, p. 111.
^ a b c Fakhry 2001, p. 106.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 107.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 110.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 112–114.
^ Dutton 1994, pp. 195–196.
^ Dutton 1994, p. 195.
^ Dutton 1994, pp. 191–192.
^ Dutton 1994, p. 192.
^ Ibn Rushd 2017, p. 11.
^ Dutton 1994, p. 204.
^ Dutton 1994, p. 199.
^ Dutton 1994, pp. 204–205.
^ Dutton 1994, pp. 201–202.
^ Dutton 1994, p. 205.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 116.
^ a b c d Forcada 2007, pp. 554–555.
^ Ariew 2011, p. 193.
^ Ariew 2011, pp. 194–195.
^ a b Vernet & Samsó 1996, p. 264.
^ Vernet & Samsó 1996, p. 266.
^ Agutter & Wheatley 2008, p. 44.
^ Vernet & Samsó 1996, pp. 266–267.
^ Glasner 2009, p. 4.
^ Glasner 2009, pp. 1–2.
^ Agutter & Wheatley 2008, p. 45.
^ a b c d Adamson 2016, p. 188.
^ Adamson 2016, p. 189–190.
^ a b c Adamson 2016, p. 190.
^ a b Adamson 2016, p. 191.
^ Hasse 2014, Averroes' Unicity Thesis.
^ Chandelier 2018, p. 163.
^ a b Arnaldez 2000, p. 27–28.
^ a b Belen & Bolay 2009, p. 378.
^ Belen & Bolay 2009, pp. 378–379.
^ a b Belen & Bolay 2009, p. 379.
^ Belen & Bolay 2009, pp. 379–380.
^ a b c Fakhry 2001, p. 132.
^ a b c Fakhry 2001, p. 133.
^ Fakhry 2001, pp. 132–133.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 131.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 129.
^ Adamson 2016, pp. 181–182.
^ Guillaume, Alfred (1945). The Legacy of Islam. Oxford University Press.
^ Bratton, Fred (1967). Maimonides, medieval modernist. Beacon Press.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 133–134.
^ a b c d Fakhry 2001, p. 134.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 134–135.
^ a b Fakhry 2001, p. 138.
^ Adamson 2016, p. 192.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 140.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 135.
^ Fakhry 2001, p. 137–138.
^ a b c Leaman 2002, p. 28.
^ a b Sonneborn 2006, p. 94.
^ a b Sonneborn 2006, p. 95.
^ 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', Wordsworth Classics, translation: J. Carroll Beckwith
^ Ben-Menahem 2017, p. 28.
^ Ben-Menahem 2017, p. 29.
^ Guessoum 2011, p. xiv.
^ Umberto Quattrocchi (29 November 1999). CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names: Common Names, Scientific Names, Eponyms, Synonyms, and Etymology. CRC Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-8493-2673-8.
^ "Averroes". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS Astrogeology Research Program.
^ "8318 Averroes (1306 T-2)". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 20 September 2021.
Works citedEdit
Adamson, Peter (2016). Philosophy in the Islamic World: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-957749-1.
Agutter, Paul S.; Wheatley, Denys N. (2008). Thinking about Life: The history and philosophy of biology and other sciences. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-4020-8866-7.
Ahmad, Jamil (1994). "Averroes". Renaissance. Lahore: Al-Mawrid. 4 (9). ISSN 1605-0045. Retrieved 14 October 2008.
Ariew, Roger (2011). Descartes Among the Scholastics. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-20724-0.
Arnaldez, Roger (1986). "Ibn Rushd". In B. Lewis; V.L. Menage; Ch. Pellat; J. Schacht (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition. Vol. III: H-Iram. Leiden and London: Brill and Luzac & co. pp. 909–920. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0340. ISBN 978-90-04-08118-5.
Arnaldez, Roger (2000) [1998]. Averroes: A Rationalist in Islam. Translated by David Streight. University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-02008-6.
Ben-Menahem, Yemima (25 April 2017). "Borges on Replication and Concept Formation". In Ayelet Shavit; Aaron M. Ellison (eds.). Stepping in the Same River Twice: Replication in Biological Research. Yale University Press. pp. 23–36. ISBN 978-0-300-22803-8.
Chandelier, Joël (2018). "Averroes on Medicine". In Peter Adamson; Matteo Di Giovanni (eds.). Interpreting Averroes. Cambridge University Press. pp. 158–176. doi:10.1017/9781316335543.010. ISBN 978-1-316-33554-3.
Belen, Deniz; Bolay, Hayrunnisa (2009). "Averroës in The school of Athens: a Renaissance man and his contribution to Western thought and neuroscience". Neurosurgery. Oxford University Press. 64 (2): 374–381. doi:10.1227/01.NEU.0000338262.42326.A1. ISSN 1524-4040. PMID 19190465.
Dutton, Yasin (1994). "The Introduction to Ibn Rushd's "Bidāyat al-Mujtahid"". Islamic Law and Society. 1 (2): 188–205. doi:10.2307/3399333. JSTOR 3399333.
Fakhry, Majid (2001), Averroes (Ibn Rushd) His Life, Works and Influence, Oneworld Publications, ISBN 978-1-85168-269-0
Forcada, Miquel (2007). "Ibn Rushd: Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Rushd al-Ḥafīd". In Thomas Hockey; et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, Springer Reference. New York: Springer. pp. 564–565.
Glasner, Ruth (18 June 2009). Averroes' Physics: A Turning Point in Medieval Natural Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-956773-7.
Guessoum, Nidhal (15 February 2011). Islam's Quantum Question: Reconciling Muslim Tradition and Modern Science. I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84885-518-2.
Hasse, Dag Nikolaus (2014). "Influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on the Latin West". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
Hillier, H. Chad. "Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126–1198)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002.
Iskandar, Albert Z. (2008). "Ibn Rushd (Averroës)". In Helaine Selin (ed.). Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. New York: Springer. pp. 1115–1117. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9240. ISBN 978-1-4020-4559-2.
Leaman, Olivier (2002), An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-79757-3
McGinnis, Jon; Reisman, David C. (2007). Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60384-392-8.
Renan, Ernest (1882). Averroès et l'Averroïsme: Essai Historique (in French). Calmann-Lévy. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
Sonneborn, Liz (2006). Averroes (Ibn Rushd): Muslim Scholar, Philosopher, and Physician of the Twelfth Century. The Rosen Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4042-0514-7.
Taylor, Richard C. (2005). "Averroes: religious dialectic and Aristotelian philosophical thought". In Peter Adamson; Richard C. Taylor (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 180–200. ISBN 978-0-521-52069-0.
Vernet, Juan; Samsó, Julio (1996). "The development of Arabic science in Andalusia". In Roshdi Rashed (ed.). Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. Routledge. pp. 243–275. ISBN 978-0-415-12410-2. OCLC 912501823.
Wohlman, Avital (4 December 2009). Al-Ghazali, Averroes and the Interpretation of the Qur'an: Common Sense and Philosophy in Islam. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-22444-8.
Rosenthal, Erwin I.J. (26 December 2017). "Averroës". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.
External linksEdit
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Averroes

Wikiquote has quotations related to Averroes.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Averroes.

Works of AverroesEditDARE, the Digital Averroes Research Environment, an ongoing effort to collect digital images of all Averroes manuscripts and full texts of all three language-traditions.
Averroes, Islamic Philosophy Online (links to works by and about Averroes in several languages)
The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes: Tractata translated from the Arabic, trans. Mohammad Jamil-ur-Rehman, 1921
The Incoherence of the Incoherence translation by Simon van den Bergh. [N. B. : Because these refutations consist mainly of commentary on statements by al-Ghazali which are quoted verbatim, this work contains a translation of most of the Tahafut.] There is also an Italian translation by Massimo Campanini, Averroè, L'incoerenza dell'incoerenza dei filosofi, Turin, Utet, 1997.
SIEPM Virtual Library, including scanned copies (PDF) of the Editio Juntina of Averroes's works in Latin (Venice 1550–1562)
Ibn Rushd (2017). Bidayat al-Mujtahid wa Nihayat al-Muqtasid. Dar Al Kotob Al Ilmiyah. ISBN 978-2-7451-3412-7.
Information about AverroesEditFouad Ben Ahmed & Robert Pasnau. "Ibn Rushd [Averroes]". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
H. C. Hillier. "Ibn Rushd (Averroes)". on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Bibliography, a comprehensive overview of the extant bibliography
Averroes Database, including a full bibliography of his works
Podcast on Averroes, at NPR's Throughline

Al-Ghazali - Wikipedia

Al-Ghazali - Wikipedia
Al-Ghazali

Article TalkLanguage


Not to be confused with al-Ghazal. For other uses, see Ghazali.

Al-Ghazali (c. 1058 – 19 December 1111; ٱلْغَزَّالِيُّ), full name Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭūsiyy al-Ġazzālīy (أَبُو حَامِدٍ مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ مُحَمَّدٍ ٱلطُّوسِيُّ ٱلْغَزَالِيُّ),[a] and known in Persian-speaking countries as Imam Muhammad-i Ghazali (Persian: امام محمد غزالی) or in Medieval Europe by the Latinized as Algazelus or Algazel, was a Persian polymath.[27][28][29][30][31] He is known as one of the most prominent and influential philosophers, theologians, jurists, logicians and mystics of Islam.[32][33][34]

Al-Ghazālī

الغزالي

Abu Hamed Al-Ghazālī in Arabic calligraphy
Title Ḥujjat al-Islām (honorific)[1]
Personal
Born
Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭūsī al-Ġaz(z)ālī
c. 1058

Tus, Iran, Seljuq Empire
Died 19 December 1111 (aged 52–53)

Tus, Iran, Seljuq Empire
Religion Islam
Era Islamic Golden Age
Region Seljuq Empire (Nishapur)[2]: 292 
Abbasid Caliphate (Baghdad) / (Jerusalem) / (Damascus) [2]: 292 
Denomination Sunni[3][4]
School Shafiʿi
Creed Ashʿari[5][6]
Main interest(s) Sufism, theology (kalam), philosophy, logic, Islamic jurisprudence
Notable work(s) The Revival of Religious Sciences, The Aims of the Philosophers, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, The Alchemy of Happiness, The Moderation in Belief, On Legal theory of Muslim Jurisprudence
Other names Algazel
Muslim leader

Influenced byHarith al-Muhasibi[7]
Avicenna
Al-Juwayni[8]

InfluencedAbu Bakr ibn al-Arabi[9] Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani,[10] Al-Nawawi[11] Ibn Tumart[12] René Descartes[13]Fakhruddin Razi[14] Suyuti[15] Maimonides[16]Tan Malaka Thomas Aquinas[17] Shah Waliullah Dehlawi[18] David Hume[19] Sayf al-Din al-Amidi[20] Asad Mayhani[21] Ali al-Qari[22] Muhammad Ibn Yahya al-Janzi[23]


He is considered to be the 5th century's Mujaddid,[35][36] a renewer of the faith, who, according to the prophetic hadith, appears once every 100 years to restore the faith of the Islamic Community.[37][38][39] His works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that al-Ghazali was awarded the honorific title "Proof of Islam" (Ḥujjat al-Islām).[1]

Al-Ghazali believed that the Islamic spiritual tradition had become moribund and that the spiritual sciences taught by the first generation of Muslims had been forgotten.[40] This belief led him to write his magnum opus entitled Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm ad-dīn ("The Revival of the Religious Sciences").[41] Among his other works, the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa ("Incoherence of the Philosophers") is a landmark in the history of philosophy, as it advances the critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th-century Europe.[34]

Contents


LifeEdit

The believed date of al-Ghazali's birth, as given by Ibn al-Jawzi, is AH 450 (1058/9). Modern estimates place it at AH 448 (1056/7), on the basis of certain statements in al-Ghazali's correspondence and autobiography.[42] He was a Muslim scholar, law specialist, rationalist, and spiritualist of Persian descent.[43] He was born in Tabaran, a town in the district of Tus, Khorasan (now part of Iran),[42] not long after Seljuks entered Baghdad and ended Shia Buyid Amir al-umaras. This marked the start of Seljuk influence over Caliphate. While the Seljuk dynasty's influence grew, Abu Suleiman Dawud Chaghri Beg married his daughter, Arslan Khatun Khadija[44] to caliph Al-Qa'im in 1056.[45]

A posthumous tradition, the authenticity of which has been questioned in recent scholarship, is that his father died in poverty and left the young al-Ghazali and his brother Ahmad to the care of a Sufi. Al-Ghazali's contemporary and first biographer, 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, records merely that al-Ghazali began to receive instruction in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) from Ahmad al-Radhakani, a local teacher and Abu ali Farmadi, a Naqshbandi sufi from Tus.[42]: 26–27  He later studied under al-Juwayni, the distinguished jurist and theologian and "the most outstanding Muslim scholar of his time,"[42] in Nishapur, perhaps after a period of study in Gurgan. After al-Juwayni's death in 1085, al-Ghazali departed from Nishapur and joined the court of Nizam al-Mulk, the powerful vizier of the Seljuq empire, which was likely centered in Isfahan. After bestowing upon him the titles of "Brilliance of the Religion" and "Eminence among the Religious Leaders," Nizam al-Mulk advanced al-Ghazali in July 1091 to the "most prestigious and most challenging" professorial position at the time: the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad.[42]

He underwent a spiritual crisis in 1095, likely suffering from clinical hysteria,[46][47][48] abandoned his career and left Baghdad on the pretext of going on pilgrimage to Mecca. Making arrangements for his family, he disposed of his wealth and adopted an ascetic lifestyle. According to biographer Duncan B. Macdonald, the purpose of abstaining from scholastic work was to confront the spiritual experience and more ordinary understanding of "the Word and the Traditions."[49] After some time in Damascus and Jerusalem, with a visit to Medina and Mecca in 1096, he returned to Tus to spend the next several years in 'uzla (seclusion). The seclusion consisted in abstaining from teaching at state-sponsored institutions, but he continued to publish, receive visitors and teach in the zawiya (private madrasa) and khanqah (Sufi lodge) that he had built.

Fakhr al-Mulk, grand vizier to Ahmad Sanjar, pressed al-Ghazali to return to the Nizamiyya in Nishapur. Al-Ghazali reluctantly capitulated in 1106, fearing rightly that he and his teachings would meet with resistance and controversy.[42] He later returned to Tus and declined an invitation in 1110 from the grand vizier of the Seljuq Sultan Muhammad I to return to Baghdad. He died on 19 December 1111. According to 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, he had several daughters but no sons.[42]

School affiliationsEdit

Al-Ghazali contributed significantly to the development of a systematic view of Sufism and its integration and acceptance in mainstream Islam. As a scholar of Sunni Islam, he belonged to the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence and to the Asharite school of theology.[50] Al-Ghazali received many titles such as Sharaf-ul-Aʾimma (شرف الأئمة), Zayn-ud-dīn (زين الدين) and Ḥujjat-ul-Islām (حجة الإسلام).

He is viewed as the key member of the influential Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy and the most important refuter of the Mutazilites. However, he chose a slightly different position in comparison with the Asharites. His beliefs and thoughts differ in some aspects from the orthodox Asharite school.[50]

WorksEdit

Mausoleum of Al-Ghazali in Tus, located near the tomb of the Persian poet Ferdowsi.[51] The mausoleum was discovered in the 1990s after being lost for many centuries and remains neglected.

A total of about 70 works can be attributed to Al-Ghazali.[52] He is also known to have written a fatwa against the Taifa kings of Al Andalus, declaring them to be unprincipled, not fit to rule and that they should be removed from power. This fatwa was used by Yusuf ibn Tashfin to justify his conquest of al-Andalus [53]
Incoherence of the PhilosophersEdit

His 11th century book titled The Incoherence of the Philosophers marks a major turn in Islamic epistemology. The encounter with skepticism led al-Ghazali to investigate a form of theological occasionalism, or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God.

In the next century, Averroes drafted a lengthy rebuttal of al-Ghazali's Incoherence entitled The Incoherence of the Incoherence; however, the epistemological course of Islamic thought had already been set.[54] Al-Ghazali gave as an example of the illusion of independent laws of cause the fact that cotton burns when coming into contact with fire. While it might seem as though a natural law was at work, it happened each and every time only because God willed it to happen—the event was "a direct product of divine intervention as any more attention grabbing miracle". Averroes, by contrast insisted while God created the natural law, humans "could more usefully say that fire caused cotton to burn—because creation had a pattern that they could discern."[55][56][57]

The Incoherence also marked a turning point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of Aristotle and Plato. The book took aim at the falasifa, a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries (most notable among them Avicenna and Al-Farabi) who drew intellectually upon the Ancient Greeks.

This long-held argument has been criticized. George Saliba in 2007 argued that the decline of science in the 11th century has been overstated, pointing to continuing advances, particularly in astronomy, as late as the 14th century.[58] On the other hand, author and journalist Hassan Hassan in 2012 argued that while indeed scientific thought in Islam was stifled in the 11th century, the person mostly to blame is not Al-Ghazali but Nizam al-Mulk.[59]
AutobiographyEdit

Last page of Al-Ghazali's autobiography in MS Istanbul, Shehid Ali Pasha 1712[clarification needed], dated AH 509 (AD 1115–1116).

The autobiography al-Ghazali wrote towards the end of his life, Deliverance From Error (المنقذ من الضلال al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl), is considered a work of major importance.[27] In it, al-Ghazali recounts how, once a crisis of epistemological skepticism had been resolved by "a light which God Most High cast into my breast ... the key to most knowledge,"[60]: 66  he studied and mastered the arguments of kalam, Islamic philosophy, and Ismailism. Though appreciating what was valid in the first two of these, at least, he determined that all three approaches were inadequate and found ultimate value only in the mystical experience and insight (the state of prophecy or nubuwwa)[citation needed] he attained as a result of following Sufi practices. William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience, considered the autobiography an important document for "the purely literary student who would like to become acquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the Christian" because of the scarcity of recorded personal religious confessions and autobiographical literature from this period outside the Christian tradition.[61]: 307 

The Revival of Religious Sciences (Ihya' Ulum al-Din)Edit

See also: The Revival of the Religious Sciences

Another of al-Ghazali's major works is Ihya' Ulum al-Din or Ihya'u Ulumiddin (The Revival of Religious Sciences). It covers almost all fields of Islamic sciences: fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), kalam (theology) and sufism.[citation needed]

It contains four major sections: Acts of worship (Rub' al-'ibadat), Norms of Daily Life (Rub' al-'adatat), The ways to Perdition (Rub' al-muhlikat) and The Ways to Salvation (Rub' al-munjiyat). The Ihya became the most frequently recited Islamic text after the Qur'an and the hadith. Its great achievement was to bring orthodox Sunni theology and Sufi mysticism together in a useful, comprehensive guide to every aspect of Muslim life and death.[62] The book was well received by Islamic scholars such as Nawawi who stated that: "Were the books of Islam all to be lost, excepting only the Ihya', it would suffice to replace them all."[63]

The Alchemy of Happiness
See also: The Alchemy of Happiness

The Alchemy of Happiness is a rewritten version of The Revival of the Religious Sciences. After the existential crisis that caused him to completely re-examine his way of living and his approach to religion, Al-Ghazali put together The Alchemy of Happiness[64] to reassert his fundamental belief that a connection to God was an integral part of the joy of living. The book is divided into four different sections. The first of these is Knowledge of Self, where Al-Ghazali asserts that while food, sex, and other indulgences might slake humans appetites temporarily, they in turn make a human into an animal, and therefore will never give true happiness and fulfillment. In order to find oneself, people must devote themselves to God by showing restraint and discipline rather than gluttony of the senses. The second installment is called Knowledge of God, where Al-Ghazali states that the events that occur during one's life are meant to point an individual towards God, and that God will always be strong, no matter how far humans deviate from His will. The third section of The Alchemy of Happiness is Knowledge of the World. Here he states that the world is merely a place where humans learn to love God, and prepare for the future, or the afterlife, the nature of which will be determined by our actions in this phase of our journey to happiness. The final section is Knowledge of the Future World, which details how there are two types of spirits within a man: the angelic spirit and the animal spirit. Al-Ghazali details the types of spiritual tortures unbelievers experience, as well as the path that must be taken in order to attain spiritual enlightenment. This book serves as a culmination of the transformation Ghazali goes through during his spiritual awakening.

Disciplining the Soul

One of the key sections of Ghazali's Revival of the Religious Sciences is Disciplining the Soul, which focuses on the internal struggles that every Muslim will face over the course of his lifetime.[65] The first chapter primarily focuses on how one can develop himself into a person with positive attributes and good personal characteristics . The second chapter has a more specific focus: sexual satisfaction and gluttony.[65] Here, Ghazali states that indeed every man has these desires and needs, and that it is natural to want these things.[65] However, the Prophet explicitly states that there must be a middle ground for man, in order to practice the tenets of Islam faithfully. The ultimate goal that Ghazali is presenting not only in these two chapters, but in the entirety of The Revival of the Religious Sciences, is that there must be moderation in every aspect of the soul of a man, an equilibrium. These two chapters were the 22nd and 23rd chapters, respectively, in Ghazali's Revival of the Religious Sciences[65]. It's also important to note here that Ghazali draws from Greek as well as Islamic philosophy in crafting this literary staple, even though much of The Incoherence of the Philosophers, his most well known work, takes a critical aim at their perspective.

The Eternity of the World

Al-Ghazali crafted his rebuttal of the Aristotelian viewpoint on the creation of the world in The Eternity of the World . Al-Ghazali essentially formulates two main arguments for what he views as a sacrilegious thought process. Central to the Aristotelian approach is the concept that motion will always precede motion, or in other words, a force will always create another force, and therefore for a force to be created, another force must act upon that force.[34] This means that in essence time stretches infinitely both into the future and into the past, which therefore proves that God did not create the universe at one specific point in time. Ghazali counters this by first stating that if the world was created with exact boundaries, then in its current form there would be no need for a time before the creation of the world by God.[34] The second argument Ghazali makes is that because humans can only imagine the time before the creation of the world, and your imagination is a fictional thing, that all the time before the world was created is fictional as well, and therefore does not matter as it was not intended by God to be understood by humans.

The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine Unbelief

Al-Ghazali lays out in The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine Unbelief his approach to Muslim orthodoxy. Ghazali veers from the often hardline stance of many of his contemporaries during this time period and states that as long as one believes in the Prophet Muhammad and God himself, there are many different ways to practice Islam and that any of the many traditions practiced in good faith by believers should not be viewed as heretical by other Muslims.[42] While Ghazali does state that any Muslim practicing Islam in good faith is not guilty of apostasy, he does outline in The Criterion that there is one standard of Islam that is more correct than the others, and that those practicing the faith incorrectly should be moved to change.[42] In Ghazali's view, only the Prophet himself could deem a faithfully practicing Muslim an infidel, and his work was a reaction to the religious persecution and strife that occurred often during this time period between various Islamic sects.[42]
Works in PersianEdit

Al-Ghazali wrote most of his works in Arabic and few in Persian. His most important Persian work is Kimiya-yi sa'adat (The Alchemy of Happiness). It is al-Ghazali's own Persian version of Ihya' 'ulum al-din (The Revival of Religious Sciences) in Arabic, but a shorter work. It is one of the outstanding works of 11th-century-Persian literature. The book was published several times in Tehran by the edition of Hussain Khadev-jam, a renowned Iranian scholar. It is translated to English, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Azerbaijani and other languages.[64]

Another authentic work of al-Ghazali is the so-called “first part” of the Nasihat al-muluk (Counsel for kings), addressed to the Saljuqid ruler of Khurasan Ahmad b. Malik-shah Sanjar (r. 490-552/1097-1157).[66] The text was written after an official reception at his court in 503/1109 and upon his request. Al-Ghazali was summoned to Sanjar because of the intrigues of his opponents and their criticism of his student's compilation in Arabic, al-Mankhul min taʿliqat al-usul (The sifted notes on the fundamentals), in addition to his refusal to continue teaching at the Nizamiya of Nishapur. After the reception, al-Ghazali had, apparently, a private audience with Sanjar, during which he quoted a verse from the Quran 14:24: “Have you not seen how Allah sets forth a parable of a beautiful phrase (being) like a beautiful tree, whose roots are firm and whose branches are in Heaven.” The genuine text of the Nasihat al-muluk, which is actually an official epistle with a short explanatory note on al-Manḵul added on its frontispiece [67] and the title given to it later, discloses the verse image of the “beautiful tree” (shajara tayyiba) consisting of ten roots and ten branches.

Faza'il al-anam min rasa'il Hujjat al-Islam is the collection of letters in Persian that al-Ghazali wrote in response to the kings, ministers, jurists and some of his friends after he returned to Khorasan. The collection was gathered by one of his grandchildren after his death, under five sections/chapters. The longest letter is the response to objections raised against some of his statements in Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche of Light) and al-Munqidh min al-dalal (Rescuer from Error). The first letter is the one which al-Ghazali wrote to Sultan Sanjar presenting his excuse for teaching in Nizamiyya of Nishapur; followed by al-Ghazali's speech in the court of Sultan Sanjar. Al-Ghazali makes an impressive speech when he was taken to the king's court in Nishapur in 1106, giving very influential counsels, asking the sultan once again for excusing him from teaching in Nizamiyya. The sultan was so impressed that he ordered al-Ghazali to write down his speech so that it will be sent to all the ulemas of Khorasan and Iraq.

Zad-e Ākhirat (Provision for the hereafter) is an important Persian book of al-Ghazali but gained less scholarly attention. The greater part of it consists of the Persian translation of one of his Arabic books, Bidayat al-Hidaya (Beginning of Guidance). It contains in addition the same contents as the Kimiya-yi Sa'adat. The book was most probably written during the last years of his life. Its manuscripts are in Kabul (Library of the Department of Press) and in Leiden.

Another Persian work is Hamāqāt-i ahl-i ibahat or Radd-i ebāhīyya (Condemnation of antinomians) which is his fatwa in Persian illustrated with Quranic verses and Hadiths.

The majority of other Persian texts, ascribed to him with the use of his fame and authority, especially in the genre of Mirrors for Princes, are either deliberate forgeries fabricated with different purposes or compilations falsely attributed to him. The most famous among them is Ay farzand (O Child!). This is undoubtedly a literary forgery fabricated in Persian one or two generations after al-Ghazali's death. The sources used for the forgery consist of two genuine letters by al-Ghazali's (number 4, in part, and number 33, totally); both appear in the Fazaʾil al-anam.[68] Another source is a letter known as ʿAyniya and written by Muhammad's younger brother Majd al-Din Ahmad al-Ghazali (d. 520/1126) to his famous disciple ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani (492-526/1098-1131); the letter was published in the Majmuʿa-yi athar-i farsi-yi Ahmad-i Ghazali (Collection of the Persian writings of Ahmad Ghazali).[69] The other is ʿAyn al-Quzat's own letter, published in the Namaha-yi ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani (Letters by ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani).[70] Later, Ay farzand was translated into Arabic and became famous as Ayyuha al-walad, the Arabic equivalent of the Persian title. The earliest manuscripts with the Arabic translation date from the second half of the 16th and most of the others from the 17th century.[71] The earliest known secondary translation from Arabic into Ottoman Turkish was done in 983/1575.[72] In modern times, the text was translated from Arabic into many European languages and published innumerable times in Turkey as Eyyühe’l-Veled or Ey Oğul.[73]

A less famous Pand-nama (Book of counsel) also written in the genre of advice literature is a very late compilatory letter of an unknown author formally addressed to some ruler and falsely attributed to al-Ghazali, obviously because it consists of many fragments borrowed mostly from various parts of the Kimiya-yi saʿadat.[74]

InfluenceEdit
Learn more

This section needs more complete citations for verification. (November 2019)


During his life, he wrote over 70 books on science, Islamic reasoning and Sufism.[75] Al-Ghazali distributed his book The Incoherence of Philosophers, set apart as the defining moment in Islamic epistemology. The experience that he had with suspicion drove al-Ghazali to shape a conviction that all occasions and connections are not the result of material conjunctions but are the present and prompt will of God.

Another of al-Ghazali's most prestigious works is Ihya' Ulum al-Din ("The Revival of Religious Sciences"). The work covers all fields of Islamic science and incorporates Islamic statute, philosophy and Sufism. It had numerous positive reactions, and Al-Ghazali at that point composed a condensed form in Persian under the title Kimiya-yi sa'adat ("The Alchemy of Happiness"). Although al-Ghazali said that he has composed more than 70 books, attributed to him are more than 400 books.

Al-Ghazali likewise assumed a noteworthy part in spreading Sufism and Sharia. He was the first to consolidate the ideas of Sufism into Sharia laws and the first to give a formal depiction of Sufism in his works. His works fortify the position of Sunni Islam, contrasted with different schools of thought.

Al-Ghazali had an important influence on both later Muslim philosophers and Christian medieval philosophers. Margaret Smith writes in her book Al-Ghazali: The Mystic (London 1944): "There can be no doubt that al-Ghazali’s works would be among the first to attract the attention of these European scholars" (page 220). Then she emphasizes, "The greatest of these Christian writers who was influenced by al-Ghazali was St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), who made a study of the Arabic writers and admitted his indebtedness to them, having studied at the University of Naples where the influence of Arab literature and culture was predominant at the time." In addition, Aquinas' interest in Islamic studies could be attributed to the infiltration of ‘Latin Averroism’ in the 13th century, especially at the University of Paris.

The period following Ghazali "has tentatively been called the Golden Age of Arabic philosophy" initiated by Ghazali's successful integration of logic into the Islamic seminary Madrasah curriculum.[76]

Al-Ghazali also played a major role in integrating Sufism with Shariah. He was also the first to present a formal description of Sufism in his works. His works also strengthened the status of Sunni Islam against other schools. The Batinite (Ismailism) had emerged in Persian territories and were gaining more and more power during al-Ghazali's period, as Nizam al-Mulk was assassinated by the members of Ismailis. In his Fada'ih al-Batiniyya (The Infamies of the Esotericists) Al-Ghazali declared them unbelievers whose blood may be spilled,[77] and wrote several books on criticism of Baatinyas which significantly weakened their status.

Al-Ghazali succeeded in gaining widespread acceptance for Sufism at the expense of philosophy.[78] At the same time, in his refutation of philosophers he made use of their philosophical categories and thus helped to give them wider circulation.[78]

His influences and impact on Sufi thought and Islam at large during the 11th century has been a subject of debate in contemporary times. Some fifty works that he had written is evidenced that he was one of the most important Islamic thinkers of his time. Three of his works, Ihaya' Ulum ad-Din (Revival of Religious Sciences), Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of Philosophers), and al-Muniqidh min a-alal (Al-Ghazali's Path to Sufism: His Deliverance from Error) are still widely read and circulated among Islamic scholars today. After the death of Al-Ghazali, it is believed there followed a long era in which there was a notable absence of Islamic philosophers, contributing to the status of Ghazali in the modern era.

The staple of his religious philosophy was arguing that the creator was the center point of all human life that played a direct role in all world affairs. Al-Ghazali's influence was not limited to Islam, but in fact his works were widely circulated among Christian and Hebrew scholars and philosophers. Some of the more notable philosophers and scholars in the west include David Hume, Dante, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Moses Ben Maimon, a Jewish theologian was deeply interested and vested in the works of Al-Ghazali. One of the more notable achievements of Ghazali were his writing and reform of education that laid the path of Islamic Education from the 12th to the 19th centuries. Al-Ghazali's works were heavily relied upon by Islamic mathematicians and astronomers such as At-Tusi.[79]

Early childhood development was a central focal point of Al-Ghazali. He worked to influence and develop a program to mold the young minds of children at an early age to develop their mind and character. He stressed that socialization, family, and schools were central in the achievement of language, morality, and behavior. He emphasized incorporating physical fitness such as games that were important in the development of young minds to attract the idea of attending schools and maintaining an education. In addition, he stressed the importance of understanding and sharing cultures in the classrooms to achieve a civic harmony that would be expressed outside the classroom and kindness to one another.

In his writings he placed this responsibility upon the teachers. His treatise on early education centered on Islamic laws, God, and memorizing the Qur'an to achieve literary skill. Ghazali emphasized the importance that there should be a dual respect in regard to the teacher and the pupil. Whereas the teacher guides the student and takes the role of a father figure and offers council to the student, and the student respects the teacher as a patriarch. He stressed that the teacher needed to pay attention to the learning paces of his students so that he could help them be successful in academic achievements.[citation needed]

Al-Ghazali was by every indication of his writings a true mystic in the Persian sense. He believed himself to be more mystical or religious than he was philosophical however, he is more widely regarded by some scholars as a leading figure of Islamic philosophy and thought. He describes his philosophical approach as a seeker of true knowledge, a deeper understanding of the philosophical and scientific, and a better understanding of mysticism and cognition.[80]

In the contemporary world, Al-Ghazali is renowned not only for his contribution to Sufism, Islam, philosophy, or education but his work and ethical approach transcends another boundary into the Islamic business practice. In the Journal of Business Ethics, authors Yusif Sidani and Akram Al Ariss explain how Islamic business ethics are governed by the writings of Abu-Hamid Al-Ghazali and even posit that Al-Ghazali is the greatest Muslim since the prophet Muhammad. Traditional Islamist's are influenced by Ghazali's writings since he was indebted to writing about and incorporating Sharia Law. They emphasize, "His mastery of philosophical logic and reasoning earned him the title of philosopher without losing his status as a religious scholar."[81] Al-Ghazili's reasoning on the use of intellect in combination with the rational and spiritual is an integral part of Muslim society today. Therefore, they approach the business perspective with the same ideology and organizational thought.

WorksEdit

Al-Ghazali mentioned the number of his works "more than 70" in one of his letters to Sultan Sanjar in the late years of his life.[citation needed] Some "five dozen" are plausibly identifiable, and several hundred attributed works, many of them duplicates because of varying titles, are doubtful or spurious.

The tradition of falsely attributing works to Al-Ghazali increased in the 13th century, after the dissemination of the large corpus of works by Ibn Arabi.[52]

Bibliographies have been published by William Montgomery Watt (The Works Attributed to Al-Ghazali), Maurice Bouyges (Essai de chronologie des oeuvres d'Al-Ghazali) and others.
Abdel Rahman Badawi's Bibliography of all works attributed to Al-Ghazali[82]PagesContent
1–72 works definitely written by al-Ghazali
73–95 works of doubtful attribution
96–127 works which are almost certainly not those of al-Ghazali
128–224 are the names of the Chapters or Sections of al-Ghazali's books that are mistakenly thought by him
225–273 books written by other authors on al-Ghazali's works
274–389 books of other unknown scholars/writers regarding al-Ghazali's life and personality
389–457 the name of the manuscripts of al-Ghazali's works in different libraries of the world:

Short List of Major Works of GazaliTitleDescriptionType
al-Munqidh min al-dalal Rescuer from Error Theology
Hujjat al-Haq Proof of the Truth Theology
Al-Iqtisād fī al-iʿtiqad The Moderation in Belief Theology
Iljām al-Awām an Ilm il-Kalām Bridling the Common Folk Away From the Science of Theological Speculation Theology
al-maqsad al-asna fi sharah asma' Allahu al-husna The best means in explaining Allah's Beautiful Names Theology
Jawahir al-Qur'an wa duraruh Jewels of the Qur'an and Its Pearls Theology
Faysal al-tafriqa bayn al-Islam wa-l-zandaqa The Criterion of Distinction between Islam and Clandestine Unbelief Theology
Al-radd al-jamil li-ilahiyyat ‘Isa bi-sarih al-Injil The Excellent Refutation of the Divinity of Jesus through the Text of the Gospel Theology
Mishkat al-Anwar The Niche for Lights, a commentary on the Verse of Light Theology
Tafsir al-yaqut al-ta'wil Theology
Mizan al-'amal Criterion of Action Tasawwuf
Ihya'e Ulum-ed'Deen The Revival of the Religious Sciences Tasawwuf
Bidayat al-hidayah The Beginning of Guidance Tasawwuf
Kimiya-yi sa'ādat The Alchemy of Happiness [a résumé of Ihya'ul ulum, in Persian] Tasawwuf
Nasihat al-muluk Counseling Kings in Persian Tasawwuf
al-Munqidh min al-dalal Rescuer from Error Tasawwuf
Minhaj al-'Abidin Methodology for the Worshipers Tasawwuf
Fada'ih al-Batiniyya The Infamies of the Esotericists, a refutation of esoteric Sufism in general and Isma'ili doctrines in particular Tasawwuf
Maqasid al falasifa Aims of the Philosophers written in the beginning of his life, in favour of philosophy and presenting the basic theories in Philosophy, mostly influenced by Avicenna's works Philosophy
Tahāfut al-Falāsifah The Incoherence of the Philosophers), [Book refutes the Greek Philosophy aiming at Avicenna and Al-Farabi; and of which Ibn Rushd wrote his famous refutation Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) Philosophy
Miyar al-Ilm fi fan al-Mantiq Criterion of Knowledge in the Art of Logic Philosophy
Mihak al-Nazar fi al-mantiq Touchstone of Reasoning in Logic Philosophy
al-Qistas al-mustaqim The Correct Balance Philosophy
Fatawy al-Ghazali Verdicts of al-Ghazali Jurisprudence
Al-wasit fi al-mathab (The medium [digest] in the Jurisprudential school) Jurisprudence
Kitab tahzib al-Isul Prunning on Legal Theory Jurisprudence
al-Mustasfa fi 'ilm al-isul The Clarified in Legal Theory Jurisprudence
Asas al-Qiyas Foundation of Analogical reasoning Jurisprudence
The Jerusalem Tract [83] Jurisprudence
Sources:[84][85]: 29 

Reception of workEdit

According to William Montgomery Watt, Al-Ghazali was considered to be the Mujaddid ("Revivier") of his age. Many, perhaps most, later Muslims concurred and, according to Watt, some have even considered him to be the greatest Muslim after Muhammad.[35]

As an example, the Islamic scholar al-Safadi stated:


Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad, the Proof of Islam, Ornament of the Faith, Abu Hamid al-Tusi (al-Ghazali) the Shafi'ite jurist, was in his later years without rival[86]

and the jurist, al-Yafi'i stated:


He was called The Proof of Islam and undoubtedly was worthy of the name, absolutely trustworthy (in respect of the Faith) How many an epitome (has he given) us setting forth the basic principles of religion: how much that was repetitive has he summarised, and epitomised what was lengthy. How many a simple explanation has he given us of what was hard to fathom, with brief elucidation and clear solution of knotty problems. He used moderation, being quiet but decisive in silencing an adversary, though his words were like a sharp sword-thrust in refuting a slanderer and protecting the high-road of guidance.[87]

The Shafi'i jurist al-Subki stated:


"If there had been a prophet after Muhammad, al-Ghazali would have been the man".[88][89]

Also a widely considered Sunni scholar, Al Dhahabi in, his praise of Al Ghazali, wrote: “Al-Ghazzaali, the imaam and shaykh, the prominent scholar, Hujjat al-Islam, the wonder of his time, Zayn al-Deen Abu Haamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Toosi al-Shaafa’i al-Ghazzaali, the author of many books and one possessed of utter intelligence. He studied fiqh in his own town, then he moved to Nisapur in the company of a group of students. He stayed with the Imaam al-Haramayn and gained a deep knowledge of fiqh within a short period. He became well-versed in ‘ilm al-kalaam and debate, until he became the best of debater.”[90]

Ibn Rushd (Averroes), a rationalist, famously responded that "to say that philosophers are incoherent is itself to make an incoherent statement."[citation needed] Rushd's book, The Incoherence of the Incoherence, attempted to refute al-Ghazali's views, but the work was not well received in the Muslim community.[91]

According to historian Firas Alkhateeb, "When one reads Imam al-Ghazali’s works at a very superficial level, one can easily misunderstand what he is saying as anti-scientific in general. The truth, however, is that al-Ghazali’s only warning to students is to not fully accept all the beliefs and ideas of a scholar simply because of his achievements in mathematics and science. By issuing such a warning, al-Ghazali is in fact protecting the scientific enterprise for future generations by insulating it from being mixed with theoretical philosophy that could eventually dilute science itself to a field based on conjecture and reasoning alone."[92]

Al-Ghazali has been seen by Orientalist scholars as causing a decline in scientific advancement in Islam, because of his refutation of the new philosophies of his time. He saw danger in the statements made by philosophers that suggested that God was not all-knowing or even non-existent, which strongly contradicted his conservative Islamic belief.[92] This position has been challenged, however.[93][94] The following statement made by Al Ghazali has been described as evidence that he was not against scientific advancement: "Great indeed is the crime against religion committed by anyone who supposes that Islam is to be championed by the denial of mathematical sciences"[53]
Economic philosophyEdit

Most aspects of Al-Ghazali's life were heavily influenced by his Islamic beliefs, and his economic philosophy was no exception. He held economic activity to a very high level of importance in his life and thought that others should as well, as he felt that it was not only necessary for the overall benefit to society but also to achieve spiritual wholeness and salvation. In his view, the worldly life of humanity depended on the economic activity of people and so he considered being economically active to be a mandated part of the Sharia law.[95]

He established three goals of economic activity that he believed were part of one's religious obligation as well as beneficial to the individual: "achievement of self-sufficiency for one's survival; provision for the well-being of one's progeny; and provision for assisting those in economic need."[95] He argued that subsistence living, or living in a way that provides the basic necessities for only one's family, would not be an acceptable practice to be held by the general population because of the detrimental results that he believed that would bring upon the economy, but he acknowledged that some people may choose to live the subsistence lifestyle at their own will for the sake of their personal religious journey. Conversely, he discouraged people from purchasing or possessing excessive material items, suggesting that any additional money earned could be given to provide for the poor.[95]

Al-Ghazali thought that it should not be necessary to force equality of income in society but that people should be driven by "the spirit of Islamic brotherhood" to share their wealth willingly, but he recognized that it is not always the case. He believed that wealth earned could be used in two potential manners. One is for good, such as maintaining the health of oneself and their family as well as taking care of others and any other actions seen as positive for the Islamic community. The other is what Al-Ghazali would consider misuse, spending it selfishly on extravagant or unnecessary material items.[95]

In terms of trade, Al-Ghazali discussed the necessity of exchanging goods across close cities as well as larger borders because it allows more goods, which may be necessary and not yet available, to be accessible to more people in various locations. He recognized the necessity of trade and its overall beneficial effect on the economy, but making money in that way might not be considered the most virtuous in his beliefs. He did not support people taking "excessive" profits from their trade sales.[95]
Quantum mechanicsEdit

In 1993, Karen Harding's paper "Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory" described several "remarkable" similarities between Ghazali's concept of occasionalism and the widely accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. She stated: "In both cases, and contrary to common sense, objects are viewed as having no inherent properties and no independent existence. In order for an object to exist, it must be brought into being either by God (al-Ghazili) or by an observer (the Copenhagen Interpretation)." She also stated:[96][97][98]


In addition, the world is not entirely predictable. For al Ghazali, God has the ability to make anything happen whenever He chooses. In general, the world functions in a predictable manner, but a miraculous event can occur at any moment. All it takes for a miracle to occur is for God to not follow His ‘custom.’ The quantum world is very similar. Lead balls fall when released because the probability of their behaving in that way is very high. It is, however, very possible that the lead ball may ‘miraculously’ rise rather than fall when released. Although the probability of such an event is very small, such an event is, nonetheless, still possible.
See alsoEditMujaddid
Nasîhatnâme

ReferencesEdit

NotesEdit

1. ^ UK: /ælˈɡɑːzɑːli/,[24] US: /ˌælɡəˈzɑːli, -zæl-/;[25][26]
2. CitationsEdit
3. ^ a b Hunt Janin, The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World, p. 83. ISBN 0786419547
4. ^ a b Griffel, Frank (2006). Meri, Josef W. (ed.). Medieval Islamic civilization : an encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415966900.
5. ^ Meri, Josef W.; Bacharach, Jere L. (2006). Medieval Islamic Civilization: A-K. Taylor and Francis. p. 293. ISBN 978-0415966917.
6. ^ Böwering, Gerhard; Crone, Patricia (2013). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0691134840. Ghazali (ca. 1058–1111) Abu Hamid Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Ghazali al-Tusi (the “Proof of Islam”) is the most renowned Sunni theologian of the Seljuq period (1038–1194).
7. ^ A.C. Brown, Jonathan (2009). Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Foundations of Islam). Oneworld Publications. p. 179. ISBN 978-1851686636.
8. ^ Leaman, Oliver (2006). The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 84. ISBN 978-0415326391.
9. ^ Smith, Margaret (1936). "The Forerunner of Al-Ghazali". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 68 (1): 65–78. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00076358. JSTOR 25182038.
10. ^ "Al-Ghazali was a direct student of Al-Juwayni".
11. ^ Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 62.
12. ^ Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 81.
13. ^ Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 76. ISBN 0199724725
14. ^ Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p. 77. ISBN 0199724725
15. ^ Marenbon, John (2007). Medieval Philosophy: an historical and philosophical introduction. Routledge. p. 174. ISBN 978-0-415-28113-3.
16. ^ Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 75. ISBN 0199724725
17. ^ Andrew Rippin, The Blackwell Companion to the Qur'an, p 410. ISBN 1405178442
18. ^ The Influence of Islamic Thought on Maimonides Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, June 30, 2005
19. ^ Karin Heinrichs, Fritz Oser, Terence Lovat, Handbook of Moral Motivation: Theories, Models, Applications, p 257. ISBN 9462092753
20. ^ Muslim Philosophy Archived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, Islamic Contributions to Science & Math, netmuslims.com
21. ^ James Robert Brown, Philosophy of Science: The Key Thinkers, p. 159. ISBN 1441142002
22. ^ Sayf Din al-Amidi Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, September 18, 2019
23. ^ Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 71.
24. ^ Ayn al-`Ilm wa Zayn al-Hilm, Muqadimmah, Page 1
25. ^ Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 74.
26. ^ "Ghazali". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
27. ^ "Al-Ghazali". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
28. ^ "Ghazālī, al-". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
29. ^ a b Böwering, Gerhard. "ḠAZĀLĪ". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 17 December 2012.
30. ^ The Spirit of Creativity: Basic Mechanisms of Creative Achievements "Persian polymath Al-Ghazali published several treatises...."
31. ^ http://www.ibe.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ghazalie.pdf « Al-Ghazali was born in A.D. 1058 (A.H. 450) in or near the city of Tus in Khurasan to a Persian family of modest means... »
32. ^ The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources "A native of Khorassan, of Persian origin, the Muslim theologian, sufi mystic, and philosopher Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali is one of the great figures of Islamic religious thought...."
33. ^ Bloch, Ernst (2019). Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 77. ISBN 9780231175357. Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (ca.1058-1111) was a Persian antirationalist philosopher and theologian.
34. ^ "Ghazali, al-". The Columbia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17 December 2012.
35. ^ Ludwig W. Adamec (2009), Historical Dictionary of Islam, p.109. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0810861615.
36. ^ a b c d Griffel, Frank (2016). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
37. ^ a b William Montgomery Watt, Al-Ghazali: The Muslim Intellectual, p. 180. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963.
38. ^ Rosmizi, Mohd; Yucel, Salih (2016). "The Mujaddid of his age: Al-Ghazali and his inner spiritual journey". UMRAN - International Journal of Islamic and Civilizational Studies. 3 (2): 1–12. doi:10.11113/umran2016.3n2.56. ISSN 2289-8204.
39. ^ Jane I. Smith, Islam in America, p. 36. ISBN 0231519990
40. ^ Dhahabi, Siyar, 4.566
41. ^ Willard Gurdon Oxtoby, Oxford University Press, 1996, p 421
42. ^ Böwering, Gerhard; Crone, Patricia; Mirza, Mahan; Kadi, Wadad; Zaman, Muhammad Qasim; Stewart, Devin J. (2013). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0691134840.
43. ^ Sonn, Tamara (1996-10-10). Interpreting Islam: Bandali Jawzi's Islamic Intellectual History. Oxford University Press. pp. 30. ISBN 9780195356564. Ghazali Revival ihya.
44. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Griffel, Frank (2009). Al-Ghazālī's Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195331622.
45. ^ Rahman, Yucel (2016). The Mujaddid of His Age.
46. ^ Bosworth, C. E. (1968). "The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World". In Boyle, J. A. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press. p. 48.
47. ^ Bosworth, C. E. (1970). "Dailamīs in Central Iran: The Kākūyids of Jibāl and Yazd". Iran. 8 (1): 73–95 [p. 86]. doi:10.2307/4299634. JSTOR 4299634.
48. ^ Abū Ḥāmid b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ghazzālī, "al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl" in Majmūʿa Rasāʾil al-Imām al-Ghazzālī. Ed. by Aḥmad Shams al-Dīn (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1988), 29, 60
49. ^ Jacques Lacan, “Some Reflections on the Ego” in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1953, No. 34, 13. (presentation, the British Psycho-Analytical Society, London, May 2nd, 1951)
50. ^ Ovidio Salazar, Al-Ghazali: The Alchemist of Happiness (2004; London: Matmedia Productions, 2006), DVD.
51. ^ Nicholson, Reynold Alleyne. (1966). "A literary history of the Arabs." London: Cambridge University Press. p. 382.
52. ^ a b R.M. Frank, Al-Ghazali and the Ashʿarite School, Duke University Press, London 1994
53. ^ "Finding Imam Al-Ghazali". 21 May 2019. Retrieved 2019-09-03.
54. ^ a b "about five dozen authentic works, in addition to which some 300 other titles of works of uncertain, doubtful, or spurious authorship, many of them duplicates owing to varying titles, are cited in Muslim bibliographical literature. [...] Already Ebn Ṭofayl (d. 581/1185, q.v.) observed that Ḡazālī wrote for different audiences, ordinary men and the elite (pp. 69-72), and Ḡazālī himself completed the rather moderate theological treatise, Eljām al-ʿawāmmʿan ʿelm al-kalām “The restraining of ordinary men from theology,” in the last month before his death" Encyclopedia Iranica.
55. ^ a b Alkhateeb, Firas (2017-11-15). Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim Civilisation from the Past. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-1-84904-977-1.
56. ^ Craig, William Lane (2001). The cosmological argument from Plato to Leibniz. Eugene, OR.: Wipf and Stock. p. 89. ISBN 978-1579107871.
57. ^ Kadri, Sadakat (2012). Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia . macmillan. pp. 118–9. ISBN 9780099523277.
58. ^ For al-Ghazali's argument see The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Translated by Michael E. Marmura. 2nd ed, Provo Utah, 2000, pp.116-7.
59. ^ For Ibn Rushd's response, see Khalid, Muhammad A. ed. Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings, Cambridge UK, 2005, p.162)
60. ^ "Many orientalists argue that Ghazali's Tahafut is responsible for the age of decline in science in the Muslim World. This is their key thesis as they attempt to explain the scientific and intellectual history of the Islamic world. It seems to be the most widely accepted view on the matter not only in the Western world but in the Muslim world as well. George Saliba, a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at Columbia University who specializes in the development of astronomy within Islamic civilization, calls this view the "classical narrative" (Saliba, 2007)." Aydin, Nuh. "Did al-Ghazali kill the science in Islam?". Archived from the original on 2015-04-30. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
61. ^ Hasan Hasan, How the decline of Muslim scientific thought still haunts, The National, 9 February 2012.
62. ^ McCarthy, Richard Joseph (1980). Freedom and fulfillment: "al-Munqidh min al-Dalal" and other relevant works. Boston: Twayne. ISBN 978-0805781670.
63. ^ James, William (2012). Bradley, Matthew (ed.). The Varieties of Religious Experience. Oxford Univ Press. ISBN 9780199691647.
64. ^ Hunt Janin, The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World 610-2003, p 83. ISBN 0786429046
65. ^ Joseph E. B. Lumbard, Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western Muslim Scholars, p. 291. ISBN 0941532607
66. ^ a b Translated into English by Mohammed Asim Bilal and available at archive.org
67. ^ a b c d Winter, T.J (2016). Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul and on Breaking the Two Desires. The Islamic Text Society.
68. ^ "SANJAR, Aḥmad b. Malekšāh". 11 August 2020.
69. ^ Makatib-i farsi-yi Ghazali ba nam-i Faza’il al-anam min rasa’il Ḥujjat al-Islam, ed. ʿAbbas Iqbal Ashtiyani, Tehran, 1954, pp. 11-12
70. ^ Makatib-i farsi-yi Ghazali ba nam-i Faza’il al-anam min rasa’il Hujjat al-Islam, ed. ʿAbbas Iqbal Ashtiyani, Tehran, 1954, pp. 13-23, 83-85
71. ^ Majmuʿa-yi athar-i farsi-yi Ahmad-e Ghazali, ed. A. Mujahid, Tehran, 1979, 2nd ed., Tehran, 1991,pp. 191-238
72. ^ Namaha-yi ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani, ed. ʿAli Naqi Monzawi and ʿAfif ʿUsayran, 2 vols.,Tehran, 1983, II, p.103, no 73
73. ^ George Henry Scherer, Al-Ghazali’s Ayyuha’l-walad, Ph.D. diss., Chicago University, 1930; Beirut, 1933, p. 27
74. ^ Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Gazali’nin bazi eserlerinin Türkçe tercümeleri. Les traductions en Turc de certains livres d’al-Ghazali, Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 9/1, 1961, p. 61
75. ^ Günaydin, Gazâlî tercümeleri: Osmanli devri ve 1928 sonrasi için bir bibliyografya denemesi, Dîvân: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi 16, 2011, pp. 70-73
76. ^ "Kimiā-Ye Saʿādat". 29 June 2021.
77. ^ Smith, Margaret (1936). "The Forerunner of Al-Ghazali". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 65–78.
78. ^ "Ghazâlî had successfully introduced logic into the madrasa (though it was studied in other venues as well (Endress 2006)). What happened to it after this time was the result of the activities of logicians much more gifted than Ghazâlî. This period has tentatively been called the Golden Age of Arabic philosophy (Gutas 2002). It is in this period, and especially in the thirteenth century, that the major changes in the coverage and structure of Avicennan logic were introduced; these changes were mainly introduced in free-standing treatises on logic. It has been observed that the thirteenth century was the time that “doing logic in Arabic was thoroughly disconnected from textual exegesis, perhaps more so than at any time before or since” (El-Rouayheb 2010b: 48–49). Many of the major textbooks for teaching logic in later centuries come from this period. [...] For all his historical importance in the process of introducing logic into the madrasa, the logic that Ghazâlî defended was too dilute to be recognizably Farabian or Avicennan." Tony Street (July 23, 2008). "Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Language and Logic". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
79. ^ Adang, Camilla; Ansari, Hassan; Fierro, Maribel (2015). Accusations of Unbelief in Islam: A Diachronic Perspective on Takfīr. Brill. p. 19. ISBN 9789004307834. Retrieved 25 December 2020.
80. ^ a b Sells, Michael Anthony (1996). Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qurʼan, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings. New York: Paulist. ISBN 9780809136193.
81. ^ "AL-Ghazali" (PDF). Quarterly Review of Comparative Education. 23: 3–4.
82. ^ Louchakova-Schwartz, Olga (2011). "The Self and the World: Vedanta, Sufism, and the Presocratics in a Phenomenological View". Phenomenology/Ontopoiesis Retrieving Geo-cosmic Horizons of Antiquity. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. pp. 423–438. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-1691-9_33. ISBN 9789400716902.
83. ^ Sidani, Yusuf; Al Ariss, Akram (2014-04-04). "New Conceptual Foundations for Islamic Business Ethics: The Contributions of Abu-Hamid Al-Ghazali". Journal of Business Ethics. 129 (4): 847–857. doi:10.1007/s10551-014-2136-5. ISSN 0167-4544. S2CID 143046325.
84. ^ A. Badawi, Mu'allafat al-Ghazali, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1961).
85. ^ At the insistence of his students in Jerusalem, al-Ghazali wrote a concise exposition of Islam Khalidi, Walid; Khalidi, commentary by Walid (1984). Before their diaspora : a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876–1948. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 978-0887281433. Archived from the original on 2018-03-02. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
86. ^ "The Mishkat al-Anwar of al-Ghazzali Index".
87. ^ At the insistence of his students in Jerusalem, al-Ghazali wrote a concise exposition of Islam. Khalidi, Walid; Khalidi, commentary by Walid (1984). Before their diaspora: a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876–1948. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 978-0887281433. Archived from the original on 2018-03-02. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
88. ^ al-Wafa bi'l wafayat, p. 274 - 277. Also see Tabaqat al-Shafiyya, subki, 4, 101.
89. ^ Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazali, The Mystic, p. 47
90. ^ Tabaqat al-Shafi’iyyah al-Kubra, Cairo, 1324/1906, Vol. IV, p. 101
91. ^ Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazali, The Mystic, p. 48
92. ^ Al-Dhahabi. Siyar A'laam al-Nubala'. Vol. 9. Lebanon: Dar Al-Hadith. p. 323.
93. ^ Menocal, Maria Rosa (29 November 2009). The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316092791 – via Google Books.
94. ^ a b "Al-Ghazali and the Revival of Islamic Scholarship". 22 May 2013. Archived from the original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
95. ^ https://islamsci.mcgill.ca/Viewpoint_ragep.pdf[bare URL PDF]
96. ^ Saliba, George (2007). Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262195577 – via Google Books.
97. ^ a b c d e Ghazanfar and Islahi (1997). "Economic Thought of Al-Ghazali" (PDF). Islamic Economics Research Series, King Abdulaziz University. 2: 7–18 – via Google Scholar.
98. ^ Harding, Karen (Summer 1993), "Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory" (PDF), The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 10 (2).
99. ^ http://www.ghazali.org/articles/harding-V10N2-Summer-93.pdf[bare URL PDF]
100. ^ Harding, Karen (1993). "Causality then and Now". American Journal of Islam and Society. 10 (2): 165–177. doi:10.35632/ajis.v10i2.2505.

SourcesEdit

Haque, Amber (2004), "Psychology from Islamic perspective: contributions of early Muslim scholars and challenges to contemporary Muslim psychologists", Journal of Religion & Health, 43 (4): 357–377, doi:10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z, S2CID 38740431
Savage-Smith, Emilie (1995), "Attitudes toward dissection in medieval Islam", Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 50 (1): 67–110, doi:10.1093/jhmas/50.1.67, PMID 7876530
Abd Rahman, Mohd Rosmizi Bin; Yucel, Salih (2016), "The Mujaddid of His Age: Al-Ghazali and His Inner Spiritual Journey", Umran, 3 (2), doi:10.11113/umran2016.3n2.56
Saritoprak, Zeki (2018), "Al-Ghazali", Islamic Spirituality : Theology and Practice for the Modern World, doi:10.5040/9781474297820.0013, ISBN 978-1-4725-7204-2
Parrott, Justin (2017), "Al-Ghazali and the Golden Rule: Ethics of Reciprocity in the Works of a Muslim Sage", Journal of Religious & Theological Information, 16 (2): 68–78, doi:10.1080/10477845.2017.1281067, S2CID 171854695
Smith, Margaret (1936), "The Forerunner of al-Ghazālī", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1): 65–78, JSTOR 25182038
Further readingEdit
Macdonald, Duncan B. (1899). "The life of al-Ghazzali", in Journal of the American Oriental Society. 20, p. 122 sqq.
Laoust, H: La politique de Gazali, Paris 1970
Campanini, M.: Al-Ghazzali, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, History of Islamic Philosophy 1996
Campanini, Massimo, Ghazali, in Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God (2 vols.), Edited by C. Fitzpatrick and A. Walker, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2014. ISBN 1610691776
Watt, W. M.: Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali, Edinburgh 1963
Zwemer, S. M. A Moslem Seeker after God, New York 1920
Nakamura, K. "Al-Ghazali", Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dougan, A. The Glimpse: The Inner teaching of Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali's Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche for Lights) by Abdullah Dougan ISBN 0-9597566-6-3
A comparison between the philosophy of Ghazali and the Copenhagen Interpretation: Harding, Karen (1993). "Causality Then and Now: al-Ghazali and Quantum Theory" (PDF). American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. 1 (2): 165–177. doi:10.35632/ajis.v10i2.2505. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-04.
Watt, W. Montgomery (1953). The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.

External linksEdit
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Al-Ghazali

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Al-Ghazali.

Translation of the Ihya ulum al-din (The Revival of Religious Sciences), Vol 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol.4
Griffel, Frank. "Al-Ghazali". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Full French text of the Deliverance from error, Préservatif contre l'erreur
Al-Ghazali website
Ghazali Series page at the Islamic Texts Society
Works by Al-Ghazali at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
A detailed biography on Imam Ghazzali (450-505H) الغزَّالِي
Works by or about Al-Ghazali at Internet Archive
Ghazali and Islamic reform
Ghazali and the Revival of Islamic Scholarship
Full text of Incoherence of the Philosophers, from Al-Ghazali website
Short commentary on The Alchemy of Happiness
The Alchemy of Happiness, by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan Philosopher, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). See original text in The Online Library of Liberty.
"Al-Ghazali Contra Aristotle: An Unforeseen Overture to Science In Eleventh-Century Baghdad". Richard P. Aulie. PSCF 45. March 1994. pp. 26–46.
Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, in https://web.archive.org/web/20120415041817/http://www.intellectualencounters.org/
(in French) Profession de Foi de l'Imam Al Ghazali