Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Sa'igh, known as Ibn Bajjah or Avem¬pace (d. 533/1138), hailed from the family al-Tujib and is, therefore, also known as al-Tujibi. Ibn Bajjah was born at Saragossa towards the end of the fifth/eleventh century, and prospered there. We have no knowledge of his early life, nor have we any idea of the teachers under whom he completed his studies. However, this much is clear that he finished his academic career at Saragossa, for when he travelled to Granada he was already an accomplished scholar of Arabic language and literature and claimed to be well versed in twelve sciences.
This is evident from the incident that occurred in the mosque of Granada as recorded by al-Suyuti: “One day Ibn Bajjah entered the mosque (jami'ah) of Granada. He saw a grammarian giving lessons on grammar to the students sitting around him. Seeing a stranger so close to them, the young students addressed Ibn Bajjah, rather by way of mockery: 'What does the jurist carry? What science has he excelled in, and what views does he hold?' 'Look here,' replied Ibn Bajjah, 'I am carrying twelve thousand dinar under my armpit.'
He thereupon showed them twelve valuable pearls of exquisite beauty each of the value of one thousand dinar. 'I have,' added Ibn Bajjah, 'gathered experience in twelve sciences, and mostly in the science of 'Arabiyyah which you are discussing. In my opinion you belong to such and such a group.' He then mentioned their lineage. The young students in their utter surprise begged his forgiveness.”1
Historians are unanimous in regarding him as a man of vast knowledge and eminence in various sciences. Fath ibn Khaqan, who has charged Ibn Bajjah of heresy and has bitterly criticized his character in his Qala'id al-'Iqyan,2 also admits his vast knowledge and finds no fault with his intellectual excellence. On account of his wealth of information in literature, grammar, and ancient philosophy, he has been compared by his contemporaries with al-Shaikh al-Ra'is Ibn Sina.3
Due to his growing fame, Abu Bakr Sahrawi, Governor of Saragossa, appoint¬ed him as his vizier. But when Saragossa fell into the hands of Alphonso I, King of Aragon, in 512/1118, Ibn Bajjah had already left the city and reached Seville via Valencia, settled there, and adopted the profession of a medical practitioner. Later on, he left for Granada, where occurred the incident referred to above. He then journeyed to north-west Africa.
On his arrival at Shatibah, Ibn Bajjah was imprisoned by Amir Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yiisuf ibn Tashifin most probably on the charge of heresy, as Fath ibn Khaqan has it. But as Renan opines,4 he was set free, probably on the recommendation of his own disciple, father of the famous Spanish philosopher Ibn Rushd.
Later on, when Ibn Bajjah reached Fez, he entered the Court of the Governor, Abu Bakr Yahya ibn Yusuf ibn Tashifin, and rose to the rank of a vizier by dint of his ability and rare scholarship. He held this post for twenty years.
This was the time of great troubles and turmoils in the history of Spain and north-west Africa. The governors of towns and cities proclaimed their independence. Lawlessness and chaos prevailed all over the country. The rival groups and personalities accused one another of heresy to gain supremacy and to win the favour of the people. The enemies of Ibn Bajjah had already declared him a heretic and tried several times to kill him. But all their efforts proved a failure. Ibn Zuhr, the famous physician of the time, however, suc¬ceeded in killing him by poison during Ramadan 533/1138 at Fez, where he was buried by the side of Ibn al'Arabi the younger.
HIS PREDECESSORS
There is no doubt that philosophy entered Spain after the third/ninth century. Some of the ancient manuscript copies of Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa available in Europe are ascribed to Maslamah ibn Abmad al-Majriti.5 Maslamah was a great mathematician in Spain. He flourished during the reign of Hakam II and died in 598/1003. 6 Among his disciples, Ibn al-Safa, Zahrawi, Karmani, and Abu Muslim 'Umar ibn Abmad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami were famous for mathematical sciences.
Karmani and Ibn Khaldun were also known as philosophers. Ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami hailed from Seville and died in 449/1054. 7 Karmani, whose full name is Abu al-Hakam 'Amr ibn 'Abd al-Rabman ibn Ahmad ibn 'Ali, hailed from Cordova, journeyed to the Eastern countries and studied medicine and arithmetic at Harran. On his return to Spain he settled at Saragossa. According to the statement of Qadi Sa`id8 and Maqqari,9 he was the first man who took the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa to Spain. Karmani died at Saragossa in 450/1063.
But philosophy had entered Spain long before the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa were introduced in that region. Muhammad ibn `Abdun al-Jabali10 travelled to the East in 347/952, studied logic with Abu Sulaim Muhammad ibn Tahir ibn Bahrain al-Sijistani, and returned to Spain in 360/965. Similarly, Ahmad and 'Umar, . the two sons of Yunus al-Barrani, entered Baghdad in 330/935, studied sciences with Thabit ibn Sinan ibn Thabit ibn Qurrah, and after a considerable period returned to Spain in 351/95611. 11
This is evident that philo¬sophy was imported into the West from the East and that in the fourth/ tenth century Spanish students studied mathematics, Hadith, Tafsir, and Fiqh as well as logic and other philosophical sciences at Baghdad, Basrah, Damas¬cus, and Egypt. But from the end of the fourth/tenth century, when philo¬sophy and logic were condemned in Spain and the advocates of these sciences were persecuted, the common people stopped favouring these sciences as far down as the fifth and sixth/eleventh and twelfth centuries. This was the reason why Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Tufail, and Ibn Ruahd had to face persecution, imprisonment, and condemnation. Very few people in those days dared deal with rational sciences.
Among the predecessors of Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Hazm deserves special attention. Ibn Hazm occupies a very high place in theology and other religious sciences. His Kitab al-Fasl fi al-Milal w-al-Nihal is unique in that he has recorded the creeds and doctrines of the Christians, Jews, and others without displaying any prejudice. But in the domain of philosophy he has never been mentioned by any Spanish scholar side by side with the philosophers. Maqqari records:12 “Ibn Habban and others say, Ibn Hazm was a man of Hadlth, jurisprudence, and polemics. He wrote many books on logic and philosophy in which he did not escape errors.”
HIS CONTEMPORARIES
For throwing light on the contemporary thinkers of Ibn Bajjah we have no earlier authority than his own disciple ibn al-Imam, through whom we have received information about his writings. Al-Wazir Abu al- Hasan 'Ali ibn 'Abd al-`Aziz ibn al-Imam, a devoted disciple of Ibn Bajjah, preserved the latter's writings in an anthology to which he added an introduction of his own. That Ibn Bajjah was very fond of this disciple, a vizier, is apparent from the pre¬amble of his letters addressed to him which are available in the said anthology as preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.13
In his introduction to the anthology, Ibn al-Imam says: “... the philosophical books were current in Spanish cities in the time of al-Hakam II (350/961-366/976), who had imported the rare works composed in the East and had got them made clear. He (Ibn Bajjah) transcribed the books of the ancients and. others and carried on his investigation into these works. The way had not been opened to any investi¬gator before him (Ibn Bajjah). Nor had anything except errors and alterations been recorded concerning these sciences of the ancients.
A number of errors for example, were committed by Ibn Hazm, who was one of the most exalted investigators of his time, while most of them had not ventured even to record their thoughts. Ibn Bajjah was superior to Ibn Hazm in investigation, and more penetrating in making distinctions. The ways of investigation in these sciences were opened only to this scholar (Ibn Bajjah) and to Malik ibn Wuhaib of Seville, both of whom were contemporaries. But except for a short account of the principles of logic nothing was recorded by Malik.
Then he gave up investigating these sciences and speaking about them openly, because of the attempts made on his life due to his discussing philosophical sciences, and due to the fact that he aimed at victory in all his conferences on scientific subjects. He turned to the religious sciences and became one of the leaders in them; but the light of philosophical knowledge did not shine upon his mind, nor did he record in philosophy anything of a private nature which could be found after his death.
As for Abu Bakr (may Allah show him mercy) his superior nature stirred him not to give up investigating into, inferring from, and reading all that had left its real impression on his mind on various occasions in the changing conditions of his time.”
The words of Ibn al-Imam are quite clearly appreciative of the merits of the contemporary Malik, and of predecessors like Ibn Hazm. Ibn al-Imam's praise of his teacher has been shared by a number of historians. Ibn Tufail, the famous author of the well-known philosophical romance, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, and a younger contemporary of Ibn Bajjah, singles out Ibn Bajjah in the introduction to his immortal romance, and describes him as follows: “But none of them possessed a more penetrative mind, a more accurate view or a more truthful insight than Abu Bakr ibn al-Sa'igh.”
Al-Shaqandi (d. 629/1231), in his famous letter in which he enumerates the achievements of the Spanish Muslims as against the Africans, challenges the latter by saying: “Have you anybody among yourselves like Ibn Bajjah in music and philosophy?”14 Maqqari records the following statement: “As for the works on music, the book of Ibn Bajjah of. Granada is sufficient by itself. He occupies in the West the place of Abu Nasr al-Farabi in the East “15
Another contemporary of Ibn Bajjah was al-Amir al-Muqtadir ibn Hud, who reigned over Saragossa (438/1046-474/1081). He has been mentioned by al-Shaqandi, who addresses the Africans in these words: “Have you any king expert in mathematics and philosophy like al-Muqtadir ibn Hud, the ruler of Saragossa?”16 His son al-Mu'tamin (d. 474/1085) was a patron of rational sciences.''17
WORKS
We give below a list of Ibn Bajjah's works:
- The Bodleian MS., Arabic Pococke, No. 206, contains 222 folios.18 It was written in Rabi' II 547/1152 at Qus. This MS. lacks the treatise on medicine, and Risalat al-Wada'.
- The Berlin MS. No. 5060 (vide Ahlwardt : Catalogue), lost during World War II.
- The Escurial MS. No. 612. It contains only those treatises which Ibn Bajjah wrote as commentaries on the treatises of al-Farabi on logic. It was written at Seville in 667/1307.
- The Khediviah MS. Akhlaq No. 290. It has been published by Dr. Omar Farrukh in his Ibn Bajjah w-al-Falsafah al-Maghribiyyah. On com-parison it has been established that this is an abridgment of Tadbir al-Mutawahhid-abridgment in the sense that it omits the greater part of the text but retains the very words of the original writer.
- Brockelmann states that the Berlin Library possesses a unique ode of Ibn Bajjah entitled Tardiyyah.
- Works edited by Asin Palacios with their Spanish translation and neces¬sary notes. (i) Kitab al-Nabat, al-Andalus, Vol. V, 1940; (ii) Risalah Ittisal al-'Aql.bi al-Insan, al-Andalus, Vol. VII, 1942; (iii) Risalah al-Wada', al-Andalus, Vol. VIII, 1943; (iv) Tadbir al-Mutawahhid entitled El Regimen Del Solitario, 1946.
- Works edited by Dr. M. Saghir Hasan al-Ma'sumi: (i) Kitab al-Nafs with notes and introduction in Arabic, Majallah al-Majma' al-'Ilm al.'Arabi, Damascus; 1958; (ii) Risalah al-Ghayah al-Insaniyyah entitled Ibn Bajjah on Human End, with English translation, Journal of Asiatic Society of Pakistan, Vol. II, 1957.
Senin, 07 Oktober 2024