Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and LiteratureArbuthnot, F. F.
History
Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and Literature
Arbuthnot, F. F.
Arabian Peninsula -- History; Arabic literature -- History and criticism
Ibn Bajah (known to Europeans under the name of Avempace) was a
philosoper and a poet of considerable celebrity, and a native of
Saragossa, in Spain. He was attacked by some people for his religious
opinions, and represented as an infidel and an atheist, professing the
doctrines held by the ancient sages and philosophers. Ibn Khallikan
defends Ibn Bajah, and says that these statements were much
exaggerated, but adds: 'God, however, knows best what his principles
were,' Abul Hassan Ali al-Imam, of Granada, was of opinion that Ibn
Bajah was the greatest Arab philosopher after Al-Farabi, and places
him higher than Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali. He left numerous logical,
grammatical and political works, and died at Fez in A.D. 1138.
Averroes, whose full and correct name is Abul Walid Muhammad bin
Rashid, was a celebrated Arab scholar, born at Cordova A.D. 1126, and
the author of many writings. He taught in his native town philosophy
and medicine, two sciences which appeared for a long time to be
inseparable, and the vulgar considered those professing them to be of
almost supernatural attainments. The period of Averroes is that of the
decadence of Arab dominion in Spain, a period when this great nation
also lost the taste for sciences which it had brought to Europe.
Considering the prodigious number of works composed by Averroes, who
filled at the same time the offices of Imam and Kadi, his entire life
must have been one of labour and meditation. He is the author of an
Arabic version of Aristotle, but it is not the first which existed in
that language, as some of his biographers assert, because this work
had been produced already at Baghdad during the brilliant Khalifate of
Mamun. There are various manuscripts of Averroes extant treating on
physics, pure mathematics, astronomy and astrology, from which it
would appear that, in spite of their encyclopaedic attainments, the
celebrated men of these times still believed in some popular errors.
Science was at that time surrounded by a kind of superstitious halo of
respect, to which Averroes, like so many others, is indebted for a
good part of his renown. He died A.D. 1198, in the city of Morocco;
his corpse was transferred to Cordova and there interred.
Medical science had already, under the second Khalif of the house of
Abbas (A.D. 754-775), enjoyed the highest honours, which it ever
afterwards retained. Great physicians were brought from the Persian
hospital of Jondshapur, and between the years A.D. 750 and 850 the
number of physicians was considerable, but only the most celebrated
will be noticed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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