Ibn Rush (Averroes)
Ibn Rušd: Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Aḥmad b. Rušd al-Qurṭubī. Called Al-Ŷadd (the grandfather). Cordoba, 450 H./1058 C. – 520 H./1126 C. Muslim jurist and theologian.
Studied jurisprudence, theology, prophetic traditions, grammar, language and literature with Abū Ŷacfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Rizq al-Umawī al-Qurṭubī, Muḥammad b. Faraŷ Ibn al-Ṭallā’, Abū Muḥammad b. cAlī al-Gassānī al-Ŷayyānī; Abū Marwān cAbd al-Malik b. Sirāŷ, Abū cAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Jayra Ibn Abī l-cĀfiya al-Umawī al-Ŷawharī y Abū l- cAbbās Aḥmad b. cUmar b. Anas Ibn al-Dalā’ī al-cUḍrī.
Ibn Rušd did not undertake the study-extension trip to the East; However, this did not prevent him from gaining a thorough knowledge of Islamic law and other Islamic religious sciences which made him a renowned jurist, The most outstanding of its time, both in al-Andalus and in the Maghreb.
Leaving aside the fact that al-Andalus would have been placed on a par with the East in the teaching of Islamic religious science, the reasons why he did not travel to the East could be the same as why he did not make the pilgrimage to Mecca, He considered that in their time the Andalusians and the Magrebites were not obliged to perform this rite in the absence of plausible possibilities of doing so without risk for their lives and their goods.
His career had a prominent political and social projection through the judiciary, legal advice at both public and private levels, and education. The public aspect of his activity, however, caused him some problems.
On a date which it is not possible to specify exactly, Ibn Rušd and other jurists ruled that, according to the legal doctrine of the school of Mālik b. Anas in al-Andalus, the sales of properties usurped or acquired in an unlawful manner had to be cancelled, even if they were carried out on behalf of the Treasury and even if these sales were old. Transactions of this type had been made by both relatives of the kings of taifas deposed by the Almoravids in Seville, Almería and Córdoba, as governors appointed by the Almoravids after their conquest of al-Andalus. Other city jurists such as Abū l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥamdīn were of the opinion that the implementation of this ruling would seriously harm the interests of the people. Indeed, the people rose up against Ibn Rušd and those who had ruled like him, but Ibn Ḥamdīn managed to placate them in return, apparently that Ibn Rušd and those who had spoken like him would publicly retract.
In 511/1117 the Almoravid emir cAlī b. Yūsuf b. Tāšufīn appointed him supreme judge of Cordoba. He held the office for four years, after which, according to his own testimony, he asked the emir to relieve him so that he could devote himself entirely to the writing of his works. According to other sources, it was his involvement in the uprising of the Cordobeses against the Almoravid garrison of the city between the years 513/1119 and 515/1121 that prompted him to abandon the judicial.
The departure from the judiciary did not imply a withdrawal from public life, but instead Ibn Rušd remained active as a mufti member of the city’s advisory council; for a time he also directed the prayer in the mosque aljama of Cordoba and to pronounce the sermon on Fridays, which, according to his biographers, He did nothing but increase his excellence and his position.
One of his principal disciples, the cIyāḍ kādi, highlights the high position our jurist attained before the Almoravid emir, who sought his advice on matters of great importance. He issued numerous opinions at the request of the political authorities, but also and as was proper to the role of the magistrate, in response to questions put to him by other judges, his disciples and, in general, Muslims who approached him on a personal basis, as people used to entrust him with the important matters that concerned them. A good part of these opinions are preserved and show to what extent the prestige as jurist achieved by Ibn Rušd was justified, Their fetuses can be taken as true models in their genre.
Of all his public actions, perhaps the one that had the most impact was the intervention before the Almoravid emir after the campaign of Alfonso I of Aragon for al-Andalus lands in 519/1125 and that, although it did not translate into any territorial gain for the Christian, it showed the weakness of the Almoravid military defenses. Given the help that some Andalusian tributary Christians had given to the Aragonese monarch, the situation of the rest of their coreligionists who still remained in al-AragoneseAndalus was seriously threatened. In the face of this very hectic panorama, in the spring of 520/1126 Ibn Rušd considered it advisable to travel to Marrakech to inform the emir of what happened and advise him to expel the tributaries who, breaking the pact under which they lived in al-Andalus, had given aid to Alfonso I against the Muslims. The emir agreed to what Ibn Rušd proposed and issued an order to all regions of al-Andalus to deport tributaries to Meknes, Salé and other areas on the African shore of the Strait. The emir took advantage of Ibn Rušd’s visit to consult him about the increasingly pressing threat from Ibn Tumart, the leader of the Almohad movement who would eventually dislodge the Almoravids from power. Ibn Rušd advised him to strengthen the walls of Marrakech, advice which was heeded by the emir. The works began in the same year and were completed early next. At the end of the year 520/June 1126 Ibn Rušd returned to Cordoba.
Entre sus discípulos destacan el cadí cIyāḍ; Ibn Baškuwāl; al-Zāhid Abū l-cAbbās Aḥmad Ibn cAbd al-Malik b. cAmīra; Abū Ŷacfar Aḥmad b. Aḥmad b. Aḥmad al-Azdī; Abū l-Ḥaŷŷāŷ al-Ṯagrī; Ibn Sacīd al-Awsī, conocido como al-Qantirāl; Abū l-Walīd b. al-Dabbāg, para el cual el maestro cordobés fue el mejor jurista de al-Andalus; Muḥammad b. Sacāda quien, upon arrival at Fez transmitted the works of the master and therefore can be considered as one of the agents of reception of his work in the Maghreb; Abū l-Ḥasan Muḥammad b. Abī l-Ḥusayn, known as Ibn al-Wazzān (d. 543/1148), who compiled the fetuas of Ibn Rušd; and his own son, Abū l-Qāsim Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Ibn Rušd, (d. 563/1167), who also served in the Cordoba judiciary and was one of the main transmitters of his father’s work. A estos discípulos se puede añadir a Abū Bakr Ibn al-cArabī; Abū l-Walīd b. Jayra; Abū Bakr b. Maymūn; cUmar b. Wāŷib; Abū l-Ḥasan b. al-Nicma; Muḥammad b. Aṣbag al-Azdī, y otros.
As for his personality, his closest biographers describe him as a very religious man, modest, of few words and great righteousness, yet easy to deal with, He was a man of great profit to his private and fellow men, whose company he frequented and a man who kept his commitments.
In Jumada II of 520/July 1126, as a result of the exhaustion that the trip to Marrakech caused him, Ibn Rušd fell ill and died four months later on the night of Sunday 11 of DayQacada of 520/28 November 1126. He was buried in the cemetery of al-cAbbās, located east of Cordoba and where his ancestors were also buried. His son Abū l-Qāsim, the father of the famous philosopher Averroes, prayed the funeral prayers for him. As it corresponded to his prestige, a great crowd is said to have accompanied his coffin to the cemetery and composed numerous elegy in his honor, elegy that, according to the biographers, They did her justice.
Ibn Rušd carried out a work of authentic renewal of the doctrine of the legal school to which he belonged through commentaries on earlier collections of jurisprudence such as that of the Andalusí al-cUtbī. This work was known by the name of its author, al-cUtbiyya, and also as al-Mustachrajah and had apparently fallen into disuse. Ibn Rušd made a commentary on it which is probably his greatest work: Kitāb al-Bayān wa-l-taḥṣīl wa-l-šarḥ wa-l-tawŷīh wa-l-taclīl li-masā’il al-cUtbiyya, también conocido como Kitāb al-Bayān wa-l-taḥṣīl li-mā fĪ l-mustajraŷa min al-tawŷīh wa-l-taclīl, cuyos veinte volúmenes han sido cuidadosamente editados por M. Ḥaŷŷī. The structure of this work and its transmission in later authors has been studied by A. Fernández Félix, who has also used its content to analyse the process of al-IslamAndalus. The reasons that led Ibn Rušd to compose the work entitled al-Muqaddamāt li-awā’il kutub al-Mudawwana are opposite to those that prompted him to compose the Bayan. Al-Muqaddamāt is a commentary on the Mudawwana, a compendium of mālikí jurisprudence prepared by the Tunisian jurist Saḥnūn, which, contrary to what happened with cUtbiyya, had become the fundamental reference of Andalusian jurists of the Almoravid period, It was therefore essential to clarify those passages of the work that created confusion in those who used it. Of the Muqaddamāt there are two printed editions. Its prologue has been translated together with that of the Bayān by A. Fernández Félix. Both works reached such prestige that according to some biographer, not even the founder of the Mālikí school, Mālik b. Anas, had been able to produce anything like it. Both represent the process of revision to which mālikí jurisprudence was subjected in the 12th century in systematic application of the methodological criteria imposed by the science of foundations of law. As a result of this effort, the apparent contradiction between maxims applicable to the same legal case was explained, the grounds on which opinions were based, which were believed to come from the prudent judgement of the founding jurists of the school and not from recognized sources of law, Qur’an and prophetic tradition, and rejected opinions that could not be argued on this basis. As a good conocedor of the causes that gave rise to the disagreements held among Muslim jurists, Ibn Rušd revised the contents of the “Book on problematic traditions” de al-Ṭaḥāwī en su Tahḏīb Kitāb Muškil al-āṯār li- l-Ṭaḥāwī y elaboró un resumen de la obra titulada Kutub al-mabsūḍa fī ijtilāf aṣḥāb Mālik, which dealt with doctrines and divergences of the companions of the founder of the Mālikí school, and which had been composed by Yaḥyà b. Isḥāq b. Yaḥyà (m. 293/905 or 303/916), grandson of the introducer of the Maliki doctrine in al-Andalus. This work is not preserved.
Ibn Rušd was not only aware of the need to clarify obscure aspects of legal works that made his consultation difficult for jurists of later generations but The Commission’s proposal for a Council Directive on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the carriage of goods by road is also designed to summarize the essential aspects of this doctrine in order to facilitate its application in practice. Within this section we can include his Fuṣūl fī l-fiqh al-mālikī or Extracts on mālikí jurisprudence, of which a copy is kept in Tamagrut, and its Mujtaṣar fī l-fiqh or Compendium of Islamic legal doctrine from which at least two manuscript copies are preserved.
His mastery of hereditary law is attested by the writing of an Introduction to the theme entitled al-Muqaddima fī l-farā’iḍ, from which several copies are preserved. Relevant aspects of this doctrine, such as the possibility of excluding an heir from succession, were dealt with in his Kitāb fī-hi “Ḥaŷb al-mawārīṭ” and in his Summary of the Summary of the Work “al-Ḥaŷb” (the exclusion of an heir from succession) according to the doctrine of Mālik b. Anas, founder of the legal school to which Ibn Rušd belonged.
He also composed legal works on various subjects such as his Work on ritual sacrifices (Ḍābā’iḥ), his Book on the fifth [of the spoil] (Kitāb al-jums), of which a copy is preserved in the library of the Escorial, his Book on the Atonement (Kitāb al-kaffāra), of which a copy is also preserved in the library of the Escorial. His book on how to retrieve prayers that could not be performed in time or were performed incorrectly (Kitāb tarqīc al-ṣalawāt), kept in the library of Tamagrut, and a work on ritual ablution (wuḍū’) of which a copy exists in Marrakech.
It also preserves a Profession of faith (cAqīdat al-iman) and is attributed the composition of numerous texts on various Islamic religious sciences (aŷzā’ kaṯīra fī funūn min al-cilm mujtalifa) y una Fahrasa o repertorio de maestros y obras estudiadas con ellos.
His intense activity as a jurisconsult is reflected in his Fatāwà, a collection of legal opinions issued by Ibn Rušd al-Ŷadd, gathered by his disciples and of which there are two editions. As part of this collection has been published his Epistle on the legal status of the properties of unjust rulers who acquired them illicitly and of those acting as them (Risāla fī ḥukm amwāl al-’alama al-wulāt al-muctadīn wa-man kāna fī macnā-hum)which seems to take up the content of the fatwa that Ibn Rušd issued annulling the sale of properties usurped or acquired by illegal means and that provoked the wrath of the people of Cordoba.
Many of these fetuas are transmitted in original version and retain the names of persons, places and dates involved in each case. They are therefore not only a major legal source but also provide valuable information for the study of the political, social and economic history of the Islamic West.