AVERROES (Abul-Walid Mohammed ibn-Ahmad Ibn-Mo hammed ibn-Rushd) (1126-1198), the greatest Arabian philos opher in the West, and the famous commentator on Aristotle, was born at Cordova. His early life was occupied in mastering the ology, jurisprudence, mathematics, medicine and philosophy. Through Ibn-Tofail, he became acquainted with Yusuf, a prince famous for his patronage of learning. Yusuf helped to secure for him so many important posts, such as that of judge of Se ville (I169) and later of Cordova, that Averroes complained that his frequent voyages into different parts of the empire on public business left him little time for study. Yusuf's successor, al-Mansur, at first equally well disposed towards Averroes, was incited, in 1195, by the growing popular distrust in speculative studies to intern the suspected philosopher at Elisgna, near Cor dova. Later, Averroes was summoned to Morocco, where he died the year before al-Mansur with whom (in 1199) the political power of the Mohammedans in the West came to an end, as did the Arabian culture of liberal science with Averroes.
Averroes left no school, and within the history of his own na tion has little place. His historic fame came from the Christian Schoolmen, who admired and utilized his commentaries, some times judiciously and sometimes to excess. The latter group, in Paris known as the Latin Averroists, even went so far as to adopt his teaching that God eternally produces the intelligences by a process of emanation, that matter is an eternal potency, that the active intellect is one for all men, that there is no freedom or per sonal immortality, and that there may be contradiction between religion and philosophical truth.
The works of Averroes include treatises on jurisprudence, grammar, astronomy, medicine and philosophy, many of which still exist in manuscript. Some have been published in Arabic or in German translations (cf. Uberweg : Grundriss der Geschichte der Phil. pt. 2, P. 364). By the end of the 12th century, the most important works were translated into Latin, and are found frequently in early printed editions of the works of Aris totle; they include the Colliget, a summary of medicine, the Destructio Destructionis (against A1gazel), the De Substantia Orbis, two treatises on the union of the active intellect with man, and the commentaries on Aristotle, for whom Averroes had a profound admiration. The commentaries fall under three heads: the large ones, in which a paragraph from Aristotle is quoted and expounded at length; the medium commentaries, which are resumes; and finally the short paraphrases. The large com mentaries exist only for the Posterior Analytics, Physics, De Caelo, De Anima and Metaphysics. On the History of Animals, no commentary at all exists, and paraphrases on Plato's Republic are substituted for the then inaccessible Politics. The best edi tion of the Latin translations of Averroes's works is that by Juntas (Venice, 1552).
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—E. Renan, Averroes et l'Averroisme (i869) ; C. Bibliography.—E. Renan, Averroes et l'Averroisme (i869) ; C. Prantl, Gesch. d. Logik (1885) ; C. Brockelmann, Gesch. der arabischen Litteratur (Weimar, 1898) ; A. Farah, Averroes u. seine Philosophie (Alexandria, 1903) ; T. J. de Boer, History of Philosophy in Islam (1903) ; G. M. Manser, "Die gottliche Erkenntnis der Einzeldinge" in Jahrb. f. Philos. u. spek. Theol. (1909) and "Das Verhaltnis von Glaube u. Wissen bei Averroes" (ibid. 1910 and 1911) ; S. Munk, Mélanges, 418-458 ; G. Stockl, Phil. d. Mittelalters; Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'averroisme latin an XIIIe siecle (Louvain, 1911) . (See also ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY.)