Avempace

Who was Avempace?

Abû Bakr Muḥammad Ibn Yaḥyà ibn aṣ-Ṣâ’igh at-Tûjîbî Ibn Bâjja Al-tujibi, known as Ibn Bājjah, was an Andalusian polymath: an astronomer, logician, musician, philosopher, physician, physicist, psychologist, botanist, poet and scientist. He was known in the West by his Latinized name, Avempace. He was born in Zaragoza in what is today Aragon, Spain around 1085, and died in Fes, Morocco in 1138. Avempace worked as vizir for Abu Bakr ibn Ibrahim Ibn Tîfilwît, the Almoravid governor of Zaragoza. Avempace also wrote poems for him. Avempace joined in poetic competitions with the poet al-Tutili. He later worked, for some twenty years, as the vizir of Yahyà ibn Yûsuf Ibn Tashufin, another brother of the Almoravid Sultan Yusuf Ibn Tashufin in Morocco. He was the famous author of the Kitab al-Nabat, a popular work on Botany, which defined the sex of Plants. Among his many teachers was Abu Jafar ibn Harun of Trujillo a physician in Seville, Al-Andalus.

His philosophic ideas had a clear effect on Ibn Rushd and Albertus Magnus. Most of his writings and book were not completed because of his early death. He had a vast knowledge of Medicine, Mathematics and Astronomy. His main contribution to Islamic Philosophy is his idea on Soul Phenomenology, which was never completed.