Monumento a Ibn Hazm junto a la Puerta de Sevilla, Córdoba (España).



Abū MuHammad 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;[5] 7 November 994 – 15 August 1064[2][3][6] (456 AH[4]) was a medieval Muslim poet, polymath, historian, jurist, philosopher, and theologian, born in the Caliphate of Córdoba, present-day Spain.[7] He was a leading proponent and codifier of the Zahiri school of Islamic thought[3] and produced a reported 400 works, of which only 40 still survive.[6][7] In all, his written works amounted to some 80 000 pages.[8] The Encyclopaedia of Islam refers to him as having been one of the leading thinkers of the Muslim world,[3][9] and he is widely acknowledged as the father of comparative religious studies.[6]
Personal life

The Ring of the Dove
(Ms. in Leiden University Library)
Lineage
Ibn Hazm's grandfather Sa'id and his father Ahmad both held high advisory positions in the court of the Umayyad Caliph Hisham II.[10] Scholars believe that they were Iberian Christians who converted to Islam.[11]
Upbringing
Having been raised in a politically and economically important family, Ibn Hazm mingled with people of power and influence all his life. He had access to levels of government by his adolescence that most people at the time would never know throughout their whole lives. These experiences with government and politicians caused Ibn Hazm to develop a reluctant and even sad skepticism about human nature and the capacity of human beings to deceive and oppress.[12] His reaction was to believe that there was no refuge or truth except with an infallible God, and that with men resided only corruption. Ibn Hazm was thus known for his cynicism regarding humanity and a strong respect for the principles of language and sincerity in communication.[3]
Career
Ibn Hazm lived among the circle of the ruling hierarchy of the Umayyad government. His experiences produced an eager and observant attitude, and he gained an excellent education at Córdoba. His talent gained him fame and allowed him to enter service under the Caliphs of Córdoba and Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir, Grand Vizier to the last of the Umayyad 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 Iberia 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.[7]

Historic map of Majorca and Minorca by the Ottoman admiral Piri Reis.
Ibn Hazm's father died in 1012. Ibn Hazm was frequently imprisoned as a suspected supporter of the Umayyads.[6][7] By 1031, Ibn Hazm retreated to his family estate at Manta Lisham and had begun to express his activist convictions in the literary form.[7] He was a leading proponent and codifier of the Zahiri school of Islamic thought,[3] and produced a reported 400 works of which only 40 still survive.[6][7][13] Due to his political and religious opponents gaining power after the collapse of the caliphate, he accepted an offer of asylum from the governor of the island of Majorca in the 1040s, and he continued to propagate the Zahiri school there before returning to Andalusia.[14]
Contemporaries coined the saying, "the tongue of Ibn Hazm was a twin brother to the sword of al-Hajjaj" (an infamous 7th century general and governor of Iraq), and he became so frequently quoted that the phrase "Ibn Hazm said" became proverbial.[7]
As an Athari,[1] 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 rejected practices common among more orthodox schools such as juristic discretion.[15] While initially a follower of the Maliki school of law within Sunni Islam, he switched to the Shafi'i school later and, around the age of thirty, finally settled with the Zahiri school.[12][16] He is perhaps the most well-known adherent to the school, and the main source of extant works on Zahirite law. He studied the school's precepts and methods under Abu al-Khiyar al-Dawudi al-Zahiri of Santarém Municipality, and was eventually promoted to the level of a teacher of the school himself. In 1029, the two of them were expelled from the main mosque of Cordoba for their activities.[17]
Works
Main article: List of works by ibn Hazm
Much of Ibn Hazm's substantial body of works, which approached that of Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari and as-Suyuti's, was burned in Seville by his sectarian and political opponents. His surviving works, while criticised as repetitive, didactic and abrasive in style [18] also show a fearless irreverence towards his academic critics and authorities.
Ibn Hazm wrote works on law, theology, and over ten medical books. He called for science to be integrated into a standard curriculum. In Organization of the sciences he diachronically defines educational fields as stages of progressive acquisition set over a five-year curriculum, from language and exegesis of the Qur'an, to the life and physical sciences, to a rationalistic theology.[19]
Detailed Critical Examination
In Fisal (Detailed Critical Examination), a treatise on Islamic science and theology, Ibn Hazm promoted sense perception above subjectively flawed human reason. Recognizing the importance of reason, as 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.[20]
Jurisprudence
Perhaps ibn Hazm's most influential work in the Arabic in modern times (selections have been translated into English), is The Muhallah (المحلى بالأثار), Or the Adorned Treatise. It is reported to be a Summary of a much longer work known as al-Mujallah (المجلى). It is essential focused on matters of jurisprudence or fiqh (فقه), but also touches of matters of creed in its first chapter Kitab al-Tawheed (كتاب التوحيد), Which focuses on credal matters related to monotheism and fundamental principles of approach to divine texts. One of the main points that emerges from this masterpiece of jurisprudencial thought is that ibn Hazm rejects analogical reasoning or qiyas (قياس), preferring a far more direct and literal approach to the texts.
Logic
Ibn Hazm wrote the Scope of Logic, in which he stressed on the importance of sense perception as a source of knowledge.[21] 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.[22] The work was first re-published in Arabic by Ihsan Abbas in 1959, and most recently by Abu Abd al-Rahman Ibn Aqil al-Zahiri in 2007.[23]
Ethics
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.[24]#FASTITLINKS.COM