Calle Averroes

The street takes its name from Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Rushd, “Averroes” (Córdoba, 1126 — Marrakesh, 1198), an Andalusi philosopher, jurist and physician whose work as a commentator on Aristotle was decisive for medieval European scholasticism. The republican City Council named it thus in 1932, within a series of streets dedicated to universal figures of culture.

In 1932 the City Council decided to name several streets in the Niño Jesús neighborhood after universal thinkers, and Averroes was among them. He has no link to the history of Madrid: his presence here is a tribute to Hispano-Arab thought, not the trace of an illustrious resident. Behind the Latin name is Ibn Rushd, born in Córdoba into a line of Maliki judges. He became chief qadi of Córdoba and physician to the Almohad caliphs, and devoted nearly twenty years to commenting on the entire work of Aristotle, a task that earned him a nickname that says it all: “the Commentator.” In 1195 the caliph Yaqub al-Mansur exiled him and ordered his philosophical writings burned, though he later revoked the sentence. His ideas kept traveling without him: they reached Thomas Aquinas and all the Parisian scholasticism of the 13th century. In nearly two hundred years, Madrid’s streets have gathered more than sixteen thousand names, and barely a handful point to figures from al-Andalus: alongside Averroes, only the Emir Mohamed I park and the plaza de Maslama appear.

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