al Massir (Destiny) (1997)
Director: Youssef Chahine
Starring: Nour El-Sherif (Averroes), Laila Eloui (Manuella), Mahmoud Hemida (Al Mansour, The Caliph), Safia El Emari (Averroes' Wife), Mohamed Mounir (The Bard), Khaled El Nabaoui (Nasser, The Crown Prince), Seif El Dine (The Caliph's Brother), Abdalla Mahmoud (Borhan), Ahmed Fouad Selim (Cheikh Riad), Magdi Idris (Emir of the Sect), Ahmed Moukhtar (Bard), Sherifa Maher (Manuella's Mother), Rayek Azzab (El Razi), Hassan El Adl (Gaafar), Hani Salama (Abdalla).
the story of 12th century Islamic philosopher Averroes in the Spanish province of Andalusia
Historical Background:
1126 -- Averroes born in Córdoba, Spain to a family of legal scholars.
1146 -- establishment of the Almohad dynasty.
Ibn Tufail ("Abubacer" to the West), the philosophic vizier of Yusef al-Mansur, introduced Averroes to the court and to Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr), the great Muslim physician. Averroes became friends with both men.
1160 -- Averroes was made Qadi of Seville, serving in Seville, Córdoba and Morocco.
He wrote commentaries on the Greek philosopher Aristole and a medical encyclopedia. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism.
His most important philosophical work was The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahafut al-tahafut). In the work he defended Aristotelian philosophy against the claims of al-Ghazali that the philosophy was an offense to Islam.
end of the 1100s -- a wave of fanaticism swept Andalusia. In the aftermath, Averroes was banished to an isolated place near Córdoba, where he was closely monitored
1198 -- death of Averroes in Morocco.
Because of the censorship during the period, many of the philosopher's works were lost. His surviving works are all in Latin translation.
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