| Full name | Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm |
|---|---|
| Born | November 7, 994 Córdoba, Caliphate of Córdoba |
| Died | August 15, 1064[1] (456 AH[2]) Manta Lisham, near Huelva, Taifa of Seville |
| Era | Medieval Philosophy |
| Region | Andalusian Philosophers |
| School | Islamic philosophy |
| Main interests | Metaphysics (incl. Theology), Ethics |
Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm (Arabic: أبو محمد علي بن احمد بن سعيد بن حزم; also sometimes known as al-Andalusī aẓ-Ẓāhirī;[3] November 7, 994 – August 15, 1064[1] (456 AH[2])) was an Andalusian philosopher, litterateur, psychologist, historian, jurist and theologian born in Córdoba, present-day Spain.[4] He was a leading proponent of the Zahiri school of Islamic thought and produced a reported 400 works of which only 40 still survive, covering a range of topics such as Islamic jurisprudence, logic, history, ethics, comparative religion, and theology, as well as The Ring of the Dove, on the art of love.[4]
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Ibn Hazm was born into a notable family. His great-grandfather Hazm was a convert to Islam, his grandfather Sa'id moved to Córdoba and his father Ahmad both held high advisory positions in the court of the Umayyad Caliph Hisham II.[5] The family claimed to be of Persian descent.[6] However, some modern day scholars believe that there is evidence that Ibn Hazm was a descendant of a Christian Iberian family in Manta Lisham (near Sevilla).[6]
As one of the major members of the Zahiri group, he was well-known in his time. Some other scholars reprimanded him, but Ibn Hazm was a great resister.
Ibn Hazm lived among the circle of the ruling hierarchy of the Umayyad government, produced an eager and observant attitude in young Ibn Hazm, he gained an excellent educational opportunity at Cordoba. His talent gained him fame and entered service under the Caliphs of Córdoba, and was known to have worked under Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir, Hajib (Grand Vizier) to the last of the Ummayad caliphs, Hisham III. He was also a colleague of Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo.
After the death of the Grand Vizier al-Muzaffar in 1008, the Umayyad Caliphate of Spain, became embroiled in a civil war that lasted until 1031 resulting in its collapse of the central authority of Córdoba and the emergence of many smaller incompetent states called Taifas.
[6] Ibn Hazm's father died in 1012 and Ibn Hazm continued to speak in favor of a centralized Political Structure he was accused of supporting the Umayyads, for which he was frequently imprisoned.[6] By 1031 Ibn Hazm retreated to his family estate at Manta Lisham and had begun to express his activist convictions in the literary form.[6] According to one of his sons, Ibn Hazm produced some 80,000 pages of writing, consisting of 400 works, only 40 of those works are still existent. A varied character of Ibn Hazm's literary activity covers an impressive range of Anthropology, Jurisprudence, Logic, History, Ethics, Comparative Religion and Theology. He is also known to have been fond of adventure and travels, he wrote about his visit to the island of Majorca and its capitol Medina Mayurqa near Palma, and gives interesting insight into the invention and construction of Caravels.
According to a saying of the period, "the tongue of Ibn Hazm was a twin brother to the sword of al-Hajjaj" (an infamous 7th century general and governor of Iraq)[6] and he became so frequently quoted that the phrase “Ibn Hazm said” became proverbial.[6]
He opposed the allegorical interpretation of religious texts, preferring instead a grammatical and syntactical interpretation of the Qur'an. He granted cognitive legitimacy only to revelation and sensation and considered deductive reasoning insufficient in legal and religious matters. He did much to revitalize the Zahiri madhhab, which denied the legitimacy of legal rulings based upon qiyas (analogy) and focused upon the literal meanings of legal injunctions in the Qur'an and hadith and governance. Many of his rulings differed from those of his Zahiri predecessors.
Ibn Hazm also wrote more than ten books on medicine.
A number of his works have been translated, including:
In his Fisal (Detailed Critical Examination), a treatise on Islamic science, philosophy and theology, Ibn Hazm stressed the importance of sense perception as he realized that human reason can be flawed. While he recognized the importance of reason, since the Qur'an itself invites reflection, he argued that this reflection refers mainly to revelation and sense data, since the principles of reason are themselves derived entirely from sense experience. He concludes that reason is not a faculty for independent research or discovery, but that sense perception should be used in its place, an idea that forms the basis of empiricism.[11]
Ibn Hazm wrote the Scope of Logic on logic in Islamic philosophy, in which he stressed on the importance of sense perception as a source of knowledge.[12] He wrote that the "first sources of all human knowledge are the soundly used senses and the intuitions of reason, combined with a correct understanding of a language." Ibn Hazm also criticized some of the more traditionalist theologians who were opposed to the use of logic and argued that the first generations of Muslims did not rely on logic. His response was that the early Muslims had witnessed the revelation directly, whereas the Muslims of his time have been exposed to contrasting beliefs, hence the use of logic is necessary in order to preserve the true teachings of Islam.[13]
In his book, In Pursuit of Virtue, ibn Hazm had urged his readers with the following:
Do not use your energy except for a cause more noble than yourself. Such a cause cannot be found except in Almighty God Himself: to preach the truth, to defend womanhood, to repel humiliation which your creator has not imposed upon you, to help the oppressed. Anyone who uses his energy for the sake of the vanities of the world is like someone who exchanges gemstones for gravel.[14]
A poem, or fragment of a poem, by him is preserved in Ibn Said al-Maghribi's Pennants of the Champions:[15]
By the 9th century, many Muslims in Al-Andalus believed that the Earth was flat, as mentioned in the works of the Ancient Greeks. But scholars like Ibn Hazm asserted that the Earth was a sphere, he is known to have started his debate by stating verses from the Quran: "He makes the Night overlap the Day, and the Day overlap the Night" (Zumar;5). And after detailed studies using celestial globes he concluded proof, and the now astronomer Ibn Hazm stated publicly stated that: "the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth". Ibn Hazm proof inspired generations later on including the geographer al-Idrisi, who depicted the world as a globe. [16][17]
Ibn Hazm's views on sound is that it travels at specific speeds. He gave examples of echo inside the Mosque of Córdoba to prove his statements, among the examples he proposed was the reference to the intervel between lightning and the thunder that follows it. He also implicitly believed that lightning causes thunder. [18]
Ibn Hazm also presented a notion on Dynamics regarding the "nature of motion of bodies". Ibn Hazm explained that: "there are mobile objects and stationary objects, but there is no motion nor staticness". [18]