He also had a vast knowledge of Arabic literature, a knowledge that he attempts to exploit in his commentary on Aristotle's
Poetics.
Apart from the details of his early legal education, not much information is available about Averroës' early career or the order of composition of his early extant writings. Some of his works can be dated from information in the manuscript colophons of his texts, but the vast majority of dates can be established only tentatively by extrapolation from the available information. The basic chronology of Averroës' writings was established by Manuel Alonso in 1947 and has been emended by later scholars. In 1986 Miguel Cruz Hernandez produced an updated chronology incorporating the findings of recent scholarship.
According to Alonso, Averroës wrote several of his short treatises and commentaries as early as the 1150s; other scholars suggest that they were written in the 1160s. Averroës says in his commentary on Aristotle's On the Heavens that he was in Marrakech in 1153 making astronomical observations; he also may have been helping in the setting up of schools. It was at Marrakech in 1168-1169 that an event took place that would prove the focal point of Averroës' philosophical career.
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