The Interpretation of Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi’s Scholarly Heritage in Western Historiography: George Sarton’s Perspectives

Abstract

This article analyzes George Sarton’s role in the study of the scientific legacy of Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥazm from historiographical and source-critical perspectives. The study examines Sarton’s assessments of Ibn Ḥazm’s personality, scholarly legacy, and place in the history of Islamic science as presented in his Introduction to the History of Science. Ibn Ḥazm is considered one of the leading intellectual figures of the eleventh-century Islamic West, and particular attention is given to his application of Aristotelian logic to the study of Islamic disciplines, including jurisprudence and theology. The article also discusses Ibn Ḥazm as one of the Muslim scholars who defended the concept of the Earth’s spherical shape on the basis of religious, logical, and natural-scientific arguments. Assessments of Ibn Ḥazm’s scholarly legacy are comparatively analyzed through the works of George Sarton, Fuat Sezgin, Reynold Nicholson, and Ignaz Goldziher.