Background

Born in 980 in Afshana in the district of Bukhara, Avicenna, or Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Addullah ibn Sina, was the son of a government official. The family soon moved to the city of Bukhara, the capital of the province, and known throughout the Islamic world as a center of learning and culture.

Education

Avicenna was a brilliant child and at the age of 10, he learned the complete Quran that showed his excellence. By the age of 14, he was able to beat his teacher in elementary logic that was another incident to remember. He learned from every person and came to know about new things that his ultimate way to gain knowledge in different fields. Once, he met an Indian grocer, and from him, he learned Indian Arithmetic and gradually enhanced his know-how on the subject from a great scholar. He also did self-study going through the works developed by Hellenistic authors. He came across the Hanafi scholars and he gathered knowledge on Islamic jurisprudence. During this time, when he was studying metaphysics by Aristotle he find it quite difficult to understand. But he did not gave up and one fine day he came out with the real meaning of the works that enlightened him with some good theories about metaphysics.

In Bukhara Avicenna began his studies and by the age of 16 had mastered not only natural science and rudimentary metaphysics but also medical theory, having read, by his own account, all the books written on this subject. Not satisfied with merely a theoretical understanding of medicine, he began to treat the sick, obtaining empirical knowledge in this manner and also effecting remarkable cures.

By the time Avicenna was 18, he had read all the books in the sultan's vast library.

Career

The sultan of Bukhara appointed Avicenna as one of his physicians, who then had access to the sultan's vast library. An early work written by Avicenna was an encyclopedia that included all branches of knowledge except mathematics; it ran to 20 volumes.

Avicenna had difficulty earning a livelihood after the sultan's death, and at the age of 22, he left Bukhara and wandered westward. At Jurjan, near the Caspian Sea, Avicenna lectured on logic and astronomy and wrote the first part of the Canon, his most significant medical work. He then moved to Ray (near modern Teheran), where he established a busy medical practice. There he is believed to have composed about 30 of his shorter works.

When Ray was besieged, Avicenna fled to Hamadan, ruled by the emir Shams al-Daula. Avicenna became the emir's physician and confidant and was soon appointed to the office of vizier. Since his daylight hours were spent in attendance on the emir, Avicenna was forced to pursue his teaching and studying at night. Students would gather in his home and read the parts of his two great books, the Shifa and the Canon, already composed. He would dictate additional chapters and explain the principles underlying them to his pupils.

When Shams al-Daula died, Avicenna resigned his government office, went into hiding, and passed the time drafting a final, detailed outline of the Shifa. He sent a letter to the ruler of Isfahan, asking for a position in his government. When the new emir of Hamadan learned of this, he imprisoned Avicenna. While in prison Avicenna wrote several treatises. He longed to live in Isfahan, the jeweled city of central Persia, and a few months after his release from prison he, his brother, a pupil, and two slaves disguised themselves as religious ascetics and fled to Isfahan.

Avicenna spent his final years in the service of the ruler of the city, Ala al-Daula, whom he advised on scientific and literary matters and accompanied on military campaigns. An unexpected dividend of these excursions in the field was the completion of Avicenna's chapter of the Shifa dealing with botany and zoology.

Although one Islamic bibliographer lists only 21 major and 24 minor works of Avicenna, other titles swell the total to at least 99 treatises dealing with philosophy, medicine, geometry, astronomy, theology, philology, and art. Young students in the Arab world still memorize his poems. The most significant of his scientific writings are the book on healing, Kitab al Shifa, a philosophical encyclopedia based on the Aristotelian tradition as modified by Moslem theology and Neoplatonic influences; and Al-Qanun fi al Tibb, or the Canon, which represents Avicenna's codification of Greco-Arabic medical thought.

If the Shifa exerted less influence in the West than did the Canon, this fact is explained partly by the difficulty of the subject matter and partly by the condition in which it reached Western scholars. When the Shifa was first translated into Latin during the 12th century, it was fragmented. The translators omitted the section on mathematics, presented only a small part of the chapters on physics and logic, and included a section on astronomy apparently written by someone else. Later translators were influenced by the efforts of their predecessors, and although parts of the Shifa originally overlooked or suppressed were translated subsequently, the composite nature of the work was not fully understood in the West until comparatively recently.

The Canon, in contrast, was rendered completely into Latin by one man, the great 12th-century translator of Arabic scientific works, Gerard of Cremona. The vast medical encyclopedia is divided into five books dealing with the theory of medicine, simpler drugs, special pathology and therapeutics, general diseases, and pharmacopeia.

Although much material in the second and fifth books was derived from the writings of Dioscurides, most data in the remainder of the Canon can be traced to three essential sources. Avicenna drew on the writings in the Hippocratic Corpus for fundamental doctrines. His sources for much of the anatomy and physiology were the writings of Galen. Avicenna's final authority was usually Aristotle. That Avicenna introduced the four causes of the peripatetic system into medical theory is indicative of adherence to Aristotelian principles, as is the fact that the entire Canon is arranged according to Aristotelian dialectic.

The synergistic quality of the Canon was certainly a major factor contributing to its success, and the work soon was regarded as superior even to its sources. Avicenna's book superseded the earlier medical encyclopedias and became the most important single work on medicine in the Western world. It remained a required text in certain European medical schools until the mid-17th century, and in certain Asian countries, it is influential even today.

Once, while Avicenna was ill, his slaves gave him an overdose of opium, ransacked his possessions, and escaped. Avicenna never fully recovered from this experience. In his last days, he is said to have distributed alms to the poor, freed his slaves, and listened to readings from the Koran. He died during June 1037 and was buried at Hamadan.

Avicenna, never wanting for enemies, was as true in death as in life. Medieval physician Arnold of Villanova berated Avicenna as "a professional scribbler who had stupefied European physicians by his misinterpretation of Galen." But such an assertion is heavy-handed. Indeed, without Avicenna, much knowledge would have been lost.

Furthermore, his resilience over the centuries belies Villanova’s conclusion. Lecturing in 1913, Canadian physician and professor of medicine Sir William Osler described Avicenna as "the author of the most famous medical textbook ever written." Osler added that Avicenna, as a practitioner, was “the prototype of the successful physician who was at the same time statesman, teacher, philosopher, and literary man."

Taken in his entirety, Avicenna must be seen in context with his Islamic colleagues - al-Rāzī, Ibn Rushd (Averroës), ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAbbās (Haly Abbas), Abū al-Qāsim (Albucasis), Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), and others - who, during the Islamic golden age, served as invaluable conduits of textual transmission and interpretation of Hellenistic learning for an amnesic Europe. First through Sicily and Spain and then via the Crusades, the rich cultural enlightenment of the Islamic world awakened a benighted Europe from its intellectual slumber, and Avicenna was perhaps the movement’s greatest ambassador.

Avicenna’s continued importance as a towering figure in Islamic history may be seen in his tomb at Hamadan. Even though it had fallen into disrepair by the early 20th century, Osler noted that "the great Persian has still a large practice, as his tomb is much visited by pilgrims, among whom cures are said to be not uncommon." In the 1950s the tomb was refurbished and transformed into an impressive mausoleum adorned with an imposing Mughal-inspired tower, and a museum and 8,000-volume library were added as well. Avicenna’s resting place remains a major stop for tourists in the region. Now, as when he was alive, the great physician and philosopher continues to attract the attention of scholars and the public alike.

Achievements

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  Avicenna has been described as the father of early modern medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650.
  
  In modern Iran, he is considered a national icon and is often regarded as one of the greatest Persians to have ever lived. A monument was erected outside the Bukhara museum. The Avicenna Mausoleum and Museum in Hamadan was built in 1952. Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamadan (Iran), Avicenna Research Institute in Tehran (Iran), the ibn Sīnā Tajik State Medical University in Dushanbe, Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine and Sciences at Aligarh, India, Avicenna School in Karachi and Avicenna Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan Ibne Sina Balkh Medical School in his native province of Balkh in Afghanistan, Ibni Sina Faculty Of Medicine of Ankara University Ankara, Turkey, the main classroom building (the Avicenna Building) of the Sharif University of Technology, and Ibn Sina Integrated School in Marawi City (Philippines) are all named in his honor. His portrait hangs in the Hall of the Avicenna Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris. There is also a crater on the Moon named Avicenna and a plant genus Avicennia.
  
  The Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science is awarded every two years by UNESCO and rewards individuals and groups in the field of ethics in science. The prize was established in 2003 and named after Avicenna. The aim of the award is to promote ethical reflection on issues raised by advances in science and technology and to raise global awareness of the importance of ethics in science.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Avicenna on Theology

    (Avicenna was the greatest of all Persian thinkers; as phy...)

  • The Physics of The Healing: A Parallel English-Arabic Text in Two Volumes

    (Avicenna’s Physics is the very first volume that he wrote...)

  • Avicenna’s Medicine

    (The first contemporary translation of the 1,000-year-old ...)

  • Avicenna On Cardiac Drugs

    (To Avicenna, the heart possessed a greater function than ...)

  • Avicenna On the Science of the Soul

    (Avicenna writes this short synopsis on the soul as a gift...)

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  • Compendium on the Soul

Religion

Avicenna was a devout Muslim and sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic theology. His aim was to prove the existence of God and His creation of the world scientifically and through reason and logic. Avicenna's views on Islamic theology (and philosophy) were enormously influential, forming part of the core of the curriculum at Islamic religious schools until the 19th century. Avicenna wrote a number of short treatises dealing with Islamic theology. These included treatises on the prophets (whom he viewed as "inspired philosophers"), and also on various scientific and philosophical interpretations of the Quran, such as how Quranic cosmology corresponds to his own philosophical system. In general, these treatises linked his philosophical writings to Islamic religious ideas; for example, the body's afterlife.

There are occasional brief hints and allusions in his longer works however that Avicenna considered philosophy as the only sensible way to distinguish real prophecy from illusion. He did not state this more clearly because of the political implications of such a theory, if prophecy could be questioned, and also because most of the time he was writing shorter works which concentrated on explaining his theories on philosophy and theology clearly, without digressing to consider epistemological matters which could only be properly considered by other philosophers.

Later interpretations of Avicenna's philosophy split into three different schools; those (such as al-Tusi) who continued to apply his philosophy as a system to interpret later political events and scientific advances; those (such as al-Razi) who considered Avicenna's theological works in isolation from his wider philosophical concerns; and those (such as al-Ghazali) who selectively used parts of his philosophy to support their own attempts to gain greater spiritual insights through a variety of mystical means. It was the theological interpretation championed by those such as al-Razi which eventually came to predominate in the madrasahs.

Avicenna memorized the Quran by the age of ten, and as an adult, he wrote five treatises commenting on suras from the Quran. One of these texts included the Proof of Prophecies, in which he comments on several Quranic verses and holds the Quran in high esteem. Avicenna argued that the Islamic prophets should be considered higher than philosophers.

Views

In the Al-Burhan (On Demonstration) section of The Book of Healing, Avicenna discussed the philosophy of science and described an early scientific method of inquiry. He discusses Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and significantly diverged from it on several points. Avicenna discussed the issue of a proper methodology for scientific inquiry and the question of "How does one acquire the first principles of a science?" He asked how a scientist would arrive at "the initial axioms or hypotheses of a deductive science without inferring them from some more basic premises?" He explains that the ideal situation is when one grasps that a "relation holds between the terms, which would allow for absolute, universal certainty." Avicenna then adds two further methods for arriving at the first principles: the ancient Aristotelian method of induction (istiqra), and the method of examination and experimentation (tajriba). Avicenna criticized Aristotelian induction, arguing that "it does not lead to the absolute, universal, and certain premises that it purports to provide." In its place, he develops a "method of experimentation as a means for scientific inquiry."

In addition to Avicenna’s philosophy having been readily incorporated into medieval European Scholastic thought, his synthesis of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian thought and his encompassing of all human knowledge of the time into well-organized accessible texts make him one of the greatest intellects since Aristotle. British philosopher Antony Flew’s appraisal of Avicenna as “one of the greatest thinkers ever to write in Arabic” expresses the modern scholarly assessment of the man.

In medicine, Avicenna exerted a profound influence over the schools of Europe into the 17th century. The Canon was subjected to increasing criticism by Renaissance instructors, yet, because Avicenna’s text adhered to the practice and theories of medicine described in Greco-Roman texts, instructors used it to introduce their students to the basic principles of science.

Avicenna's legacy in classical psychology is primarily embodied in the Kitab al-nafs parts of his Kitab al-shifa' (The Book of Healing) and Kitab al-najat (The Book of Deliverance). These were known in Latin under the title De Anima (treatises "on the soul"). The main thesis of these tracts is represented in his so-called "flying man" argument, which resonates with what was centuries later entailed by Descartes's cogito argument (or what phenomenology designates as a form of an "epoche"). Avicenna's psychology requires that connection between the body and soul be strong enough to ensure the soul's individuation but weak enough to allow for its immortality.

Avicenna grounds his psychology on physiology, which means his account of the soul is one that deals almost entirely with the natural science of the body and its abilities of perception. Thus, the philosopher's connection between the soul and body is explained almost entirely by his understanding of perception; in this way, bodily perception interrelates with the immaterial human intellect. In sense perception, the perceiver senses the form of the object; first, by perceiving features of the object by our external senses.

This sensory information is supplied to the internal senses, which merge all the pieces into a whole, unified conscious experience. This process of perception and abstraction is the nexus of the soul and body, for the material body may only perceive material objects, while the immaterial soul may only receive the immaterial, universal forms. The way the soul and body interact in the final abstraction of the universal from the concrete particular is the key to their relationship and interaction, which takes place in the physical body. The soul completes the action of intellection by accepting forms that have been abstracted from matter. This process requires a concrete particular (material) to be abstracted into the universal intelligible (immaterial). The material and immaterial interact through the Active Intellect, which is a "divine light" containing the intelligible forms. The Active Intellect reveals the universals concealed in material objects much like the sun makes color available to our eyes.

Quotations: "There are no incurable diseases - only the lack of will. There are no worthless herbs - only the lack of knowledge."

"Width of life is more important than length of life."

"The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit."

"Prayer is that which enables the soul to realize its divinity. Through prayer human beings worship absolute truth, and seek an eternal reward. Prayer is the foundation - stone of religion; and religion is the means by which the soul is purified of all that pollutes it. Prayer is the worship of the first cause of all things, the supreme ruler of all the world, the source of all strength. Prayer is the adoration of the one whose being is necessary."

"The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes."

"God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints."

"Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and, when lost, is likely to be restored back to health. In other words, it is the art whereby health is conserved and the art whereby it is restored after being lost. While some divide medicine into a theoretical and a practical [applied] science, others may assume that it is only theoretical because they see it as a pure science. But, in truth, every science has both a theoretical and a practical side."

"Is it the fault of wine if a fool drinks it and goes stumbling into darkness?"

"An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death."

"When you do not know the nature of the malady, leave it to nature; do not strive to hasten matters. For either nature will bring about the cure or it will itself reveal clearly what the malady really is."

"The more brilliant the lightning, the quicker it disappears."

"But the fact is that when wine is taken in moderation, it gives rise to a large amount of breath, whose character is balanced, and whose luminosity is strong and brilliant. Hence wine disposes greatly to gladness, and the person is subject to quite trivial exciting agents. The breath now takes up the impression of agents belonging to the present time more easily than it does those which relate to the future; it responds to agents conducive to delight rather than those conducive to a sense of beauty."

"Medicine considers the human body as to the means by which it is cured and by which it is driven away from health."

"The different sorts of madness are innumerable."

"It is in the nature of water ... to become transformed into earth through a predominating earthy virtue; ... it is in the nature of earth to become transformed into water through a predominating aqueous virtue."

"The theory of medicine, therefore, presents what is useful in thought, but does not indicate how it is to be applied in practice-the mode of operation of these principles. The theory, when mastered, gives us a certain kind of knowledge. Thus we say, for example, there are three forms of fevers and nine constitutions. The practice of medicine is not the work which the physician carries out, but is that branch of medical knowledge which, when acquired, enables one to form an opinion upon which to base the proper plan of treatment."

"That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence."

"Pain is a sensation produced by something contrary to the course of nature and this sensation is set up by one of two circumstances: either a very sudden change of the temperament (or the bad effect of a contrary temperament) or a solution of continuity."

"Mountains have been formed by one [or other] of the causes of the formation of stone, most probably from agglutinative clay which slowly dried and petrified during ages of which we have no record. It seems likely that this habitable world was in former days uninhabitable and, indeed, submerged beneath the ocean. Then, becoming exposed little by little, it petrified in the course of ages."

Personality

Avicenna was a great personality with enormous knowledge in various fields. He was the main creator of Islam philosophy and is famous for his works on medicine, metaphysics, and philosophy.

It is difficult to fully assess the Avicenna’s personal life. Most of what is known of Avicenna is found in the autobiography dictated to his longtime protégé al-Jūzjānī. While his life was embellished by friends and vilified by foes, by all accounts he loved life and had a voracious appetite for lively music, strong drink, and love. Avicenna’s mercurial wit and expansive brilliance won him many friends, but his flouting of Islamic puritanical conventions earned him even more enemies. At times he appears arrogant. While he borrowed heavily from al-Rāzī, Avicenna dismissed his Persian predecessor by insisting that he should have stuck “to testing stools and urine.” Avicenna also appears to have been a lonely, brooding figure, whose efforts at self-promotion were often tempered by a cagey instinct for survival in a politically volatile world. Despite Avicenna’s personal strengths and weaknesses, his intelligence was great in theoretical and practical matters.

Quotes from others about the person

• "In addition to the Graeco-Arabic scientific tradition, Avicenna also took inspiration from influences indigenous to the culture in which he lived." - Jon McGinnis

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, Abu Nasr Al-Farabi, Rhazes, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, al-Masihi, Abul Hasan Hankari

References

• Aspects of Islamic Civilization: As Depicted in the Original Texts
• Avicenna His Life And Works
• The Legacy Of Islam
• Arabian Medicine: The Fitz Patrick Lectures Delivered at the College of Physicians in November 1919 and November 1920
• Introduction to the History of Science, Volume 1: From Homer to Omar Khayyam
• Avicenna's Psychology
• Avicenna and the Visionary Recital
• An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines
• Three Muslim Sages: Avicenna-Suhrawardi-Ibn Arabi