![IbnTumlus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/IbnTumlus.JPG)
Ibn Ṭumlūs () (1164-1223) was a
Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...
n scholar whose interests ranged over medicine, philosophy, grammar and poetry. He is mainly known today for his work in logic. Ibn Ṭumlūs is known by his biographers under the name of Abū al-Ḥajjāj or Abū Isḥāq Yūsuf ibn Muhammed ibn Ṭumlūs. In Latin sources, he is known as Alhagiag Bin Thalmus.
Biography
He was born in
Alzira Alzira may refer to:
* ''Alzira'' (opera), an opera by Giuseppe Verdi
*Alzira, Valencia
Alzira ( es, Alcira) is a city and municipality of 45.088 inhabitants (62,094 floating population) in Valencia, eastern Spain. It is the capital of the ''coma ...
, near
Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...
, sometime between 1150 and 1165. He studied philosophy, medicine and perhaps jurisprudence with
Averroes
Ibn Rushd ( ar, ; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was an
Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psy ...
(Ibn Rushd), and his achievements in medicine were such that he succeeded Averroes as doctor of the
Almohad
The Almohad Caliphate (; ar, خِلَافَةُ ٱلْمُوَحِّدِينَ or or from ar, ٱلْمُوَحِّدُونَ, translit=al-Muwaḥḥidūn, lit=those who profess the unity of God) was a North African Berber Muslim empire fou ...
caliph,
Mohammad al-Nāṣir, from 1199 to 1213. He died at Alzira in 1223.
Notable Work
Not one of the works of Ibn Ṭumlūs known of today is mentioned by his biographers. Conversely, not one of the works mentioned by his biographers is available today. Ibn Abbar stated that Ibn Ṭumlūs authored some works on the sciences of the Arabic language, but these do not seem to be extant. In addition, Ibn Ṭumlūs’s biographers transmitted to us some poems made by him, which have been transcribed in Fouad Ben Ahmed's definitive biobibliography. There are only two major works that are known to have survived, his ''Book on Logic'' and his commentary on Avicenna's ''Medical Poem.''
''Book on Logic''
Ṭumlūs’ ''Book on Logic'' (''Kitāb fī Mantiq'') survives in just a single manuscript. The manuscript is undated and untitled. Some scholars have proposed dates, but these remain speculative. Although parts of the treatise have been edited under the title ''Introduction to the Art of Logic,'' in fact neither Ibn Ṭumlūs nor his copyist gave a title to the work. The text covers all the parts of Aristotle's
Organon
The ''Organon'' ( grc, Ὄργανον, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name ''Organon'' was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics.
The six ...
, including a Book of Rhetoric and Book of Poetics. Indeed, his advocacy of this expanded Organon is one of the significant features of the work. The treatise begins with a long introduction (''Ṣadr'') to the text in which Ibn Ṭumlūs addresses several controversies concerning his education in logic and the attitudes of the scholars of his time towards logic (namely, the jurists and the students of the prophetic tradition). He considers also the value of
al-Ghazālī’s and
al-Fārābī’s logical works, both from a philosophical and a religious point of view. Yet although both of these figures are influential on Ibn Ṭumlūs, recent scholarship has shown that his principal influence is his teacher, Averroes.
Excerpts from the ''Book on Logic'' have been edited and translated by various scholars:
* part of the introduction into French
* the introduction and first three sections into Spanish
* excerpts from the section on poetics into French
* the section on rhetoric into French
A critical Arabic edition of the sections on dialectic and sophistical topics has recently been made by Fouad Ben Ahmed, who is at work on an Arabic edition of the remainder of the work. At present, no English translations are available.
''Commentary on Avicenna's Medical Poem''
Ibn Ṭumlūs' other major surviving work is his commentary on
Avicenna's ''Medical Poem'' (''Šarḥ al-Urǧūza''). Although there are eight known manuscripts containing this work, with more probably yet to be identified, no complete edition of the work has been made. A colophon at the end of one manuscript dates Ibn Ṭumlūs' final revisions of the work to
Marrakesh in 1209.
[Fouad Ben Ahmed, ''Ibn Ṭumlūs''] Scholarship on this work is, at this point, extremely limited.
[Mahmud Aroua, "Réflexions sur le commentaire au poème de la médecine d’Ibn Sīnā par Ibn Ṭumlūs," in A. Hasnawi (ed.), ''Sciences et philosophies arabes: méthodes, problèmes et cas'' (Carthago, 2000)]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ibn Tumlus
1223 deaths
13th-century writers from al-Andalus
Physicians from al-Andalus
Scholars from al-Andalus
Philosophers from al-Andalus
1164 births
13th-century Spanish philosophers