Avempace

Avempace

Abū-Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn al-Sāyigh Al-tujibi (Arabic أبو بكر محمد بن يحيى بن الصائغ), known as Ibn Bājjah (Arabic: ابن باجة‎), was an Andalusian arab polymath: an astronomer, logician, musician, philosopher, physician, physicist, psychologist, botanist, poet and scientist. He was known in the West by his Latinized name, Avempace. He was born in Zaragoza in what is today Aragon, Spain in 1095, and died in Fes, Morocco in 1138. Avempace worked as vizir for Abu Bakr ibn Ibrahim Ibn Tîfilwît, the Almoravid governor of Zaragoza. Avempace also wrote poems (panegyrics and 'muwasshahat') for him, and they both enjoyed music and wine. Avempace joined in poetic competitions with the poet al-Tutili. He later worked, for some twenty years, as the vizir of Yahyà ibn Yûsuf Ibn Tashufin, another brother of the Almoravid Sultan Yusuf Ibn Tashufin (died 1143) in Morocco. He was the famous author of the Kitab al-Nabat (The Book of Plants), a popular work on Botany, which defined the sex of Plants. Among his many teachers was Abu Jafar ibn Harun of Trujillo a physician in Seville, Al-Andalus.

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