Today, the Arab scientist Ibn Rushd would have been 888 years old. His birth, celebrated yesterday with a Google Doodle, occurred in a country few can readily imagine: Spain in the 12th century, a time when the Arab empires ruled the country and when science was synonymous with the Islamic world.
Ibn Rushd, known to the West as Averroes, was one of the most important philosophers in Arab history. Indeed, he was one of the most important in European history as well. For had it not been for Ibn Rushd, Europe might never have discovered the philosophical thought of Greece, nor its expansion under the Arabs.
Ibn Rushd was a great scholar of Aristotle’s work and it was through his writings on the Greek philosopher that Europe rediscovered him, originally through the Arabic translations. His writings and commentaries were translated and circulated across the continent. Ibn Rushd’s contribution is celebrated by his inclusion in Raphael’s The School of Athens, a painting of the thinkers who made Europe’s Renaissance.
It is no exaggeration to say that this scholar, born at the point of convergence between Europe and the Arab world, was one of the intellectual fathers of both.
