Biography of Averroes

He was a Spanish muslim. His Arabic name was Abu al-Walid Muhammad bin Ahmad ibn Rushd al-Maliki.

Averroes was born about the middle of the twelfth century, of a noble family at Cordoba, the Capital of the Saracen dominions in Spain.

Averroes produced about twenty books about medicine. He defined medicine as ‘an art, based on true principles and concerned with preserving man’s health and abating disease, as far as possible.’

He was more noted as a philosopher and as a free thinker than a physician. His Kitab-al-Kuliyat was an attempt to find a system of medicine upon the customary neo-Platonic modification of Aristotle’s philosophy.

The book transliterated in the Latin West as Colliget which a resume of medical science, is divided into seven parts and was translated into Latin by the Jew Bonacosa at Padua in 1255 and a Latin translation was published at Venice in 1482.

Averroes idea in writing about medicine was to apply his particular system of philosophy to medical science.

In 1182, Averroes was appointed as the physician to the royal court in Marrakesh.

He died in 1198.
Biography of Averroes