- Lived:
- c. 1085–1138 · Zaragoza, Seville, Granada, Fez — Islamic Spain and Morocco under the Almoravids
- Tradition:
- Islamic philosophy (falsafa) in al-Andalus — the first great philosopher of Islam's far west
- The Big Idea:
- When the city is corrupt, the person of truth becomes a "weed" — and must learn to govern their own soul by a private regimen while living, outwardly ordinary, among neighbors who cannot understand them.
- In their words:
- "Though they live in their own lands, among their companions and neighbors, they are strangers in their views — for their minds have traveled to other stations, and those stations are their true homelands."
- If you remember one thing:
- He flipped al-Fārābī's insult into a badge: in a sick society, health looks like deviance — and the wise person's task is not to flee the city but to survive it with their soul intact.