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ABU AL-WALID MUHAMMAD IBN AHMAD IBN RUSHD AL-QURTUBI AVERROES’

TAHAFUT AL-TAHAFUT

(The Incoherence of the Incoherence)

TRANSLATED FROM THE ARABIC WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY: SIMON VAN DEN BERGH

PUBLISHED AND DISTRIBUTED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE “E. J. W. GIBB MEMORIAL”

E-text conversion: Muhammad Hozien

WWW.ALHASSANAIN.ORG/ENGLISH

Table of Contents

PREFACE 3

INTRODUCTION 4

THE FIRST DISCUSSION 27

THE FIRST PROOF 27

THE THIRD PROOF 71

THE FOURTH PROOF 73

THE SECOND DISCUSSION 83

THE THIRD DISCUSSION 98

THE FOURTH DISCUSSION 153

THE FIFTH DISCUSSION 165

THE SIXTH DISCUSSION 179

THE SEVENTH DISCUSSION 208

THE EIGHTH DISCUSSION 220

THE NINTH DISCUSSION 226

THE TENTH DISCUSSION 233

THE ELEVENTH DISCUSSION 238

THE TWELFTH DISCUSSION 250

THE THIRTEENTH DISCUSSION 255

THE FOURTEENTH DISCUSSION 264

THE FIFTEENTH DISCUSSION 271

THE SIXTEENTH DISCUSSION 277

ABOUT THE NATURAL SCIENCES286

THE FIRST DISCUSSION 290

THE SECOND DISCUSSION 304

The Third Discussion 324

The Fourth Discussion 326

The End 329

PREFACE

I wish to express my warmest thanks to the Trustees of the Gibb Memorial Fund for making the publication of this work possible, and especially to Professor Sir Hamilton Gibb, who asked me to undertake the work and who has not only read the proofs but has continually given me his interest and encouragement. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. R. Walzer, who has read the proofs, carefully checked the references in my notes, and composed the indexes and the Greek-Arabic and Arabic-Greek vocabularies. I have also to thank Dr. S. M. Stern for his help in completing the subject-index. Finally, I wish to pay a tribute to one who is no longer amongst us, Father Maurice Bouyges, without whose admirable text the work could never have been undertaken.

The marginal numbers in Vol. I refer to the text of Father Bouyges’s edition of the Tahafut al Tahafut in his Bibliotheca Arabica Scholasticorum, vol. iii, Beyrouth, 1930.

The asterisks indicate different readings from those to be found in Bouyges’s text: cf. the Appendix, Vol. I, pp, 364 ff.