36 Facts About Ibn Hazm

Ibn Hazm was an Andalusian Muslim polymath, historian, traditionist, jurist, philosopher, and theologian, born in the Cordoban Caliphate, present-day Spain.

Ibn Hazm had access to levels of government by his adolescence that most people then would never know throughout their whole lives.

Ibn Hazm's reaction was to believe that there was no refuge or truth except with an infallible God and that with men resided only corruption.

Ibn Hazm was thus known for his cynicism regarding humanity and a strong respect for the principles of language and sincerity in communication.

Ibn Hazm lived among the circle of the ruling hierarchy of the Caliphate of Cordoba government.

Ibn Hazm's experiences produced an eager and observant attitude, and he gained an excellent education at Cordoba.

Ibn Hazm was a leading proponent and codifier of the Zahiri school of Islamic thought, and he produced a reported 400 works, but only 40 still survive.

Ibn Hazm continued to propagate the Zahiri School there before he returned to Andalusia.

Contemporaries coined the saying "the tongue of Ibn Hazm was a twin brother to the sword of al-Hajjaj", an infamous 7th century general and governor of Iraq.

Ibn Hazm became so frequently quoted that the phrase "Ibn Hazm said" became proverbial.

Ibn Hazm granted cognitive legitimacy only to revelation and sensation, and he considered deductive reasoning insufficient in legal and religious matters.

Ibn Hazm rejected practices common among more orthodox schools such as juristic discretion.

Ibn Hazm was initially a follower of the Maliki school of law within Sunni Islam, but he switched to the Shafi'i school at around the age of thirty.

Ibn Hazm is perhaps the most well-known adherent of the school and the main source of extant works on Zahirite law.

Ibn Hazm studied the school's precepts and methods under Abu al-Khiyar al-Dawudi al-Zahiri of Santarem Municipality and was eventually promoted to the level of a teacher of the school himself.

Ibn Hazm's surviving works, while criticised as repetitive, didactic and abrasive in style, show a fearless irreverence towards his academic critics and authorities.

Ibn Hazm wrote works on law and theology and over ten medical books.

Ibn Hazm called for science to be integrated into a standard curriculum.

In Fisal, a treatise on Islamic science and theology, Ibn Hazm promoted sense perception above subjectively flawed human reason.

Ibn Hazm concludes that reason is not a faculty for independent research or discovery, but that sense perception should be used in its place, an idea that forms the basis of empiricism.

One of the main points that emerges from the masterpiece of jurisprudencial thought is that Ibn Hazm rejects analogical reasoning in favor of direct reliance on the Quran, sunnah, and ijma.

Ibn Hazm wrote the Scope of Logic, which stressed on the importance of sense perception as a source of knowledge.

Ibn Hazm wrote that the "first sources of all human knowledge are the soundly used senses and the intuitions of reason, combined with a correct understanding of a language".

Ibn Hazm criticized some of the more traditionalist theologians who were opposed to the use of logic and argued that the first generations of Muslims did not rely on logic.

Ibn Hazm's response was that the early Muslims had witnessed the revelation directly, but later Muslims have been exposed to contrasting beliefs and so the use of logic is necessary to preserve the true teachings of Islam.

Ibn Hazm viewed the Arabic language, the Hebrew language and the Syriac language as all essentially being one language which branched out as the speakers settled in different geographic regions and developed different vocabularies and grammars from the common root.

Ibn Hazm differed with many Muslim theologians in that he did not view Arabic as superior to other languages since the Qur'an does not describe Arabic as such.

Ibn Hazm viewed that there was no proof for claiming any language was superior to another.

Ibn Hazm was well known for his strict literalism and is considered the champion of the literalist Zahirite school within Sunni Islam.

Ibn Hazm said that half of the verse prohibits only saying "uff", not hitting one's parents, for example.

Ibn Hazm believed that these philosophical traditions were useful but not enough to build an individual's character properly, and he stated that the Islamic faith was necessary.

Ibn Hazm rejects those reports and traditions which proclaim that Homosexuality is worse than Zina, including certain traditions from the canonical collections.

Ibn Hazm believed Mary, Sarah, Jochebed, Asiya, Eve, and Hajar were Prophets in Islam.

Ibn Hazm is well known for rejecting the prohibition of music.

Ibn Hazm believed that the hadiths prohibiting musical instruments were weak and fabricated.

Ibn Hazm said: "The Messenger of God said, "Actions are judged according to intentions, and every person will get the reward according to what he intended.