Averroë s

Arabic Ibn Rushd in full Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Rushd

born 1126, Córdoba

died 1198, Marrakech, Almohad empire

Spanish Arabic philosopher.

Trained in law, medicine, and philosophy, he rose to be chief judge of Córdoba, an office also once held by his grandfather. His series of commentaries on most of the works of Aristotle, written between 1169 and 1195, exerted considerable influence on both Jewish and Christian scholars in later centuries. While mostly faithful to Aristotle's thought, he endowed the Aristotelian "prime mover" with the characteristics of the Plotinian (see Plotinus) and Islamic transcendent God, the universal First Cause. In his Commentary on Plato's Republic he attempted to apply Platonic doctrines to the contemporary Almoravid and Almohad states. See also Arabic philosophy.

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