ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī

Between the eight and the ninth centuries, the production of original philosophical and scien- tific treatises became dominant with respect to the study of Greek philosophical and scientific literature in Arabic translation. This is due to the contribution of translators and al-Kindī’s thought, as well as to the experience of the teachers in the tenth-century Aristotelian circle of Baghdad, mostly al-Fārābī. All these teachers had the intention to classify the sci- ences, to return to a literal commentary of the Aristotelian text following the Alexandrine model, and to single out the nature of falsafa and the Greek-Arabic sciences and their rela- tionship with the Qurʾānic sciences – an approach that extends from the end of the eleventh, throughout the twelfth, and up to the beginning of the thirteenth century. It is enough to mention Avicenna to get an idea of this development in the Arabic-Islamic philos- ophy and medicine of these centuries. The claim has been made that this generated a sort of “purist” reaction best exemplified by Averroes and his program of going back to Aristotle and the Greek tradition. Such a phenomenon took place not only in al- Andalus but also in the East of the Islamic world: Muwaffaq al-Dīn Muḥammad ʿAbd al- Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baġdādī would be the best representative of this current of thought.