Ibn Rushd in the Safavid Iran: “En Orient, après Averroès … ” Revisited

Abstract

Abstract Tracing the possible ways in which the thought of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595/1198) was transmitted within Muslim contexts can be such a “frustrating” and “depressing” task that it may have contributed to the near absence of his name in the lists of influential philosophers of Islam in the eastern part of the Islamic world. This article, through the consultation of original texts and manuscripts sets out to throw some light on this seeming absence. It offers a revision of Henry Corbin’s famous assertion about Ibn Rushd’s fate in the East by addressing the various receptions of Ibn Rushd’s texts in North Africa, Egypt, and the Levant, examining available manuscript catalogs of Ibn Rushd’s writings in Iran, and analyzing an important work by ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Lāhījī (d. 1072/1661–1662), one of the most famous philosophers of the 17th century.