Abstract

Abū-l-Walīd Muhammad ibn-Muhammad ibn-Rushd, known in the Latin West under the Hispanicized name ‘Averroes’, was, like his ancestors, a jurist in Islamic Andalusia. He became Chief Judge of Cordoba and Seville, court physician to the Almohad princes of Morocco and Spain, counsellor and courtier in the orbit of power. He belonged to the three worlds of intellectual culture in his age: he was brought up in the world of the ‘ulamā, learned exegetes and administrators of the Sharī‘a (the revealed law of Islam); he mastered the world of the rational sciences – applied in medicine and astronomy, and crowned by the universal wisdom of philosophy that was taken to lead the way to true wisdom and ultimate happiness; and he rose to high station in the world of court, where the Commander of the Faithful ruled as absolute king. He embodied the sum of intellectual excellence and active experience a person could gain in his time and place.