On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy

Averroes was the last great philosopher in Islam in the twelfth century , and is the most scholarly and scrupulous commentator of Aristotle. He is far better known in Europe than in the Orient, where few of his works are still in existence and where he had no influence, he being the last great philosopher of his culture. Renan, who wrote a big book about him, Averroes et l’Averro’asme, had never seen a line of Arabic by him. Lately some of his works have been edited in Arabic, for instance his Tahafut al Tahafut, in a most exemplary manner. Averroes' influence on European thought during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has been immense.Abu 'l-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd (better known just as Ibn Rushd, and in European literature as Averroes (1126-1198), was a Muslim Andalusian philosopher, physician, and polymath: a master of philosophy, theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, astronomy, geography, mathematics, medicine, physics, psychology and science. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. He has been described as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe. He wrote commentaries on most of the surviving works of Aristotle. There were three levels of commentary: the Jami, the Talkhis and the Tafsir which are, respectively, a simplified overview, an intermediate commentary with more critical material, and an advanced study of Aristotelian thought in a Muslim context. His most important original philosophical work was The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahafut al-Tahafut), in which he defended Aristotelian philosophy against al-Ghazali's claims in The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa). In medicine, he wrote a medical encyclopedia called Kulliyat (Generalities, i.e. general medicine), known in its Latin translation as Colliget. He also made a compilation of the works of Galen (129-200) and wrote a commentary on The Canon of Medicine (Qanun fi 't-tibb) of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980-1037).