ABSTRACT
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) is a philosopher who came to hold far greater sway among Jews and Christians than he ever exercised over Muslims. The sort of philosophy which he advocated, broadly modelled on Peripateticism with the leading role being given to Aristotle, ceased to flourish after his death as far as the West of the Islamic world was concerned. It continued to a degree in the East, often being thoroughly merged into broader and more mystical forms of philosophical expression, but it is true to say that there is not much evidence of a continuing interest in Averroes to any persistent degree for long after his death. Historians of Islamic philosophy often claim that while Averroes may have thought that he had won the argument with al-Ghazzālī and had established the desirability of the study of philosophy within a Muslim environment, yet it was al-Ghazzālī who had the last laugh, since the thought of Averroes seems to have failed to gain any particularly significant grip on the imagination of subsequent Muslim thinkers. It is only really in the twentieth century that Muslim writers have discovered the interest which his thought possesses on a number of topics, and especially where the relationship between religion and philosophy is concerned.
