“Avempace” is the name who given by European for Ibn Bajjah. He was highly influential in medicine, philosophy and mathematics.
He was a celebrated Spanish Muslim scholar, commentator of Aristotle, scientist, poet and musician. He was a creative and iconoclastic thicker, an instigator of the ‘Andalusia revolt’, who operated an observatory on his own and made original contribution to physical theory, with his account of projectile motion.
His thoughts greatly influenced Ibnu Rushd also called by the Latinized name, Averroes, 1126–98 AD), the Andalusian philosopher known as “the Commentator on Aristotle.” Avempace practiced as a physician in his native city but after the fall of Saragossa in 513 AH to the Christians he resided in Seville and Xatina.
Later he went to Fez in Morocco where he was made at the Almoravid court. Ibnu Bajjah’s most celebrated work is Tadbir al-Mutawahhid, Regime of the Solitary which he left unfinished. Tadbirul-Mutawahhid is a book about moral and political inspired from AlMadinatul-Fadhilah from Al-Farabi.
Kitab al-Nafs (Book on the soul) is a philosophical treatise focused on psychology and principles of logic and reason. Although the treatise draws parallels with, and is often compared to, Aristotle’s De Anima (On the soul), it is not an explicit commentary on that work.
Avempace wrote nine medical treatises. One of them is “Commentary on Aphorisms”. Galen inscribed commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms in “Commentary on Aphorisms” that includes Avempace’s view about medicine. Medical syllogisms are revolved by means of experience. Experience is obtained in a person’s life time through perception. Avempace defines experience: "As man’s reliance on perception to know particular [aspects, juz’iyyat] of some matter so that some science results from this perception.”
Ibnu Bajjah or Avempace
