Averrhoes

Averrhoes, or Ibn-Roschd, Abou-Walid Mohammed Ibn-Ahmed, his literary name being a corruption of his patronymic, stands with Avicenna (q.v.) at the head of the so-called Arabian school of philosophy. He belonged to a good Moorish family, and was born about 1126 at Cordova, then a learned city. Averrhoes devoted his life mainly to the study of Aristotle. With unflagging industry he annotated and expanded the doctrines of the Stagirite, earning for himself the title of "The Commentator." He appears to have adopted the Oriental theory of emanations, and to have held that the perishable and individual soul is a part of an immortal and universal intelligence. He also distinguished between the active and passive soul, the provinces respectively of reason and faith. Such doctrines were as offensive to the devout believers in the Koran as to the orthodox scholastic theologians. Averrhoes was banished for a while from Cordova, and his views, at the instigation of St. Thomas Aquinas, were condemned by the University of Paris in 1240. He wrote treatises on medicine, astronomy, and law, and exercised the functions of Kadi in Morocco, where it is said he died in 1198 or 1206. M. Renan has given an exhaustive account of him in his Averroes et l'Averroisme.