Asked if the heavens were eternal, Averroes wisely said nothing at first
In 1169 the Almohad caliph asked Ibn Rushd whether the heavens had always existed. Fearing a dangerous answer, he stayed silent until the ruler showed he knew Plato and Aristotle himself. That audience launched the commentaries that earned Averroes a European nickname: simply the Commentator.
Ibn Rushd was born in Córdoba on 14 April 1126 into a family of judges; his grandfather had been chief judge and imam of the city's Great Mosque. Latin writers turned the Spanish-sounding Aben Rushd into Averroes. He studied Maliki law, memorised Imam Malik's Muwatta, trained in medicine, and joined a Seville circle of thinkers that included Ibn Tufayl and the future caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub.
By 1153 he was in Marrakesh making astronomical observations, hoping to find physical rather than purely mathematical laws for the heavens; the search failed. It was Ibn Tufayl, court physician and a friend despite their differences, who introduced him to Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf. When the caliph complained that Aristotle was hard going, Ibn Tufayl proposed Averroes as explainer. Judgeships followed in Seville and Córdoba, and in 1182 he succeeded Ibn Tufayl as court physician and became chief judge of Córdoba, his grandfather's old office.
Averroes wanted Aristotle stripped of the Neoplatonic layers added by al-Farabi and Avicenna, and he defended philosophy against al-Ghazali, arguing it was allowed in Islam, even required of some, and that scripture clashing with reason should be read allegorically. In medicine he offered a new account of stroke, described Parkinson's disease for the first time, and may have been first to pin light-sensing on the retina; his Colliget served European students for centuries.
In 1195 a Córdoba tribunal condemned his teachings, ordered his books burned and exiled him to Lucena. Explanations vary: the caliph courting orthodox scholars before war with Christian kingdoms, Averroes calling him King of the Berbers in a zoology commentary, or his criticism of tyranny in a commentary on Plato's Republic. He was restored to favour and died on 11 December 1198. His influence was modest in the Islamic world but large in Europe, where Latin and Hebrew translations revived Aristotle and inspired Averroism, condemned by the Church in 1270 and 1277.
Source: Averroes
