Author: ip

Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980-1037) is one of the foremost philosophers of the golden age of Islamic tradition that also includes al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. He is also known as al-Sheikh al-Rais (Leader among the wise men) a title that was given to him by his students. His philosophical works were one of the main targets of al-Ghazali’s attack on philosophical influences…

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Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

Abu’l-Walid Ibn Rushd, better known as Averroes (1126-1198), stands out as a towering figure in the history of Arab-Islamic thought, as well as that of West-European philosophy and theology. In the Islamic world, he played a decisive role in the defense of Greek philosophy against the onslaughts of the Ash’arite theologians (Mutakallimun), led by al-Ghazali (d. 1111), and the rehabilitation of Aristotle.

The meaning and concept of philosophy in Islam

Seyyed Hossein Nasr In the light of the Qur’an and Hadith in both of which the term hikmah has been used,1 Muslim authorities belonging to different schools of thought have sought over the ages to define the meaning of hikmah as well as falsafah, a term which entered Arabic through the Greek translations of the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries. On the one hand what…

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Ibn Taymiyya

Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) is one of the most influential Muslim Theologian  Full Name: Laqab ( Nick Name): Shayakh al-Islam Kunya (Prefix): Abū al-ʿAbbās. First Name: Taqī al-Dīn Ahmad b. Abd al-Ḥalīm b. Muḥammad b. Abd al-Salām (Majd al-Dīn). Family Name: Ibn Taymiyya. Widely known as: Sheyakh al-Islam. City Named after: al-Ḥarānī (from Kurdish Ḥarrān in Northern Iraq-Western Syria). Biography: Original Source Biography:…

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Preface

About four years ago I received a letter from Mr. S. M. Sharif, Educational Adviser to the Government of Pakistan and now Secretary in the Ministry of Education, drawing my attention to the fact that there was no detailed History of Muslim Philosophy in the English language and inviting me to draw up a scheme…

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Greek Philosophy

The Introduction of Greek Philosophy in the Muslim World [1] Greek or to be precise Hellenistic philosophy came into the Muslim world by way of Syriac. At Haran, in northern Iraq, a philosophical school kept versions of the Hellenistic philosophical heritage intact in either the original Greek or in Syriac translations. In the time of the Abbasid rule, that fertile period, in which the…

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