ABSTRACT
Ibn Rushd's life and thought represent the culmination of the remarkable development of Islamic philosophy that took place between 700 and 1200 CE. Through his dedication to the task of interpreting the philosophy of Aristotle he became known to the scholastic thinkers of the western world as the Commentator, much as Aristotle was known as the Philosopher. He opposed many of the views of his two great predecessors, Ibn Sina and al- Ghazali, who had asserted and argued powerfully for the supremacy of faith over reason. In response to al-Ghazali's famous work, Tahafut al- Falasifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), Ibn Rushd wrote an equally famous reply, Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of ‘The Incoherence’), 1 in which he set out to defend philosophy and reason without weakening any of the tenets of the Islamic faith. His fundamental aim was to demonstrate the compatibility of philosophy with religion.
