Averroes’ Maßgebliche Abhandlung

The Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) became famous among Latin European scholars as a commentator of the works of Aristotle. In Europe he was known as Averroes or simple as commentarius, “the commentator.” Active under the Almohads in Muslim Seville, Cordoba, and Marrakech, his various sets of commentaries on Aristotle were translated into Latin and Hebrew and widely read until the 16th century. In Islam, however, his influence was very limited until the 19th century when three of his works on the harmonization of religion and philosophy were discovered in a Spanish manuscript library. Ibn Rushd wrote these three works in his capacity as a Muslim legal scholar (faqih) and an Almohad theologian. In these works he expresses the view that best theology of Islam is the philosophy of Aristotle.

This volume offers a German translation of two of Ibn Rushd’s work on Islamic theology: his Decisive Treatise on the Kind of Connection Between the Religious Law and Philosophy (Fasl al-maqal)and the so-called Appendix on Divine Knowledge (al-Damima). The translations come with extensive notes and explanations as well as an introduction on Ibn Rushd’s life, his position as a scholar of the Almohad movement, and the influence of his Decisive Treatise on debates within modern Islam.