Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

114 Part 3: Islamic Philosophy in History
their Islamic imitations continue to emphasize the importance of the
Ibn S¥nå, Ghazzål¥, and Ibn Rushd debates rather than the Ibn S¥nå,
Råz¥, and apple¨s¥ one, whereas the second is more important for the later
history of Islamic philosophy than the first.
ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY IN SPAIN
While philosophy was in eclipse in the eastern lands of Islam, it
flourished in Islamic Spain. Islamic philosophy in the western lands of
Islam actually began with the Sufi philosopher Ibn Masarrah (d. 319/
931), who profoundly influenced later thinkers. This link between
Sufism and philosophy continued in Spain to the end except for the
major figure of Ibn Rushd. Another early thinker, Ibn ¡azm (d. 454/
1064), jurist, theologian, philosopher, and author of one of the first
Muslim works on comparative religion, also composed a famous treatise
on Platonic love entitled T.awq al-÷amåmah (The Ring of the Dove).
The first major philosopher in the Maghrib to follow the eastern
mashshå˘¥ school was Ibn Båjjah (d. 533/1138), known both for his
significant commentaries on Aristotelian physics and his philosophical
masterpiece, Tadb¥r al-mutawa÷÷id (Regimen of the Solitary), which
maintains that the perfect state can come about only through the perfection
of individuals who can unite their intellects with the Active
Intellect. This work has a definite mystical bent as does the masterpiece
of his successor, Ibn appleufayl (d. 580/1185), who like Ibn Båjjah
was a political figure and scientist but is likewise known for one major
opus, ¡ayy ibn Yaqz • ån (Living Son of the Awake), which has also a
mystical meaning and which bears the name of Ibn S¥nå’s visionary
recital but with a different structure. The work deals in a symbolic
language with the harmony between the inner illumination received
by the intellect and the knowledge revealed through revelation. Ibn
appleufayl’s philosophical novel was translated immediately into Hebrew
but not into medieval Latin until the seventeenth century, when it
became famous in Europe as Philosophos Autodidactus and exercised
wide influence in both philosophical and literary circles.
The most famous Islamic philosopher of the Maghrib, Ibn Rushd
(523–95/1126–98) known in Latin as Averroes, chief religious judge of
Cordoba and a physician, wrote the most famous medieval commentaries
on the Aristotelian corpus and was referred to in the West as
“The Commentator.” He set out to revive Peripatetic philosophy by
responding to al-Ghazzål¥’s Tahåfut in his own Tahåfut al-tahåfut (Incoherence
of the Incoherence). In contrast to his image in the West as a