.
Avicenna, or, in Persian, Abu Ali Husain ebn Abdallah
Ebn-e Sina or simply Ibn Sina (as he is usually called) (980 - 1037), was a Persian physician, philosopher, and scientist. He was
the author of 450 books on a wide range of subjects. Many of these concentrated on
philosophy and medicine. He is
considered by many to be "the father of modern medicine". George Sarton
called Ibn Sina "the most famous scientist of Islam and one of the most famous of all
races, places, and times." His most famous works are The Book
of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, also
known as the Qanun. His Latinized name is a corruption of Ibn Sina, the short name by which he was known in
Persia.
Early life
Ibn Sina was born in Kharmaithen
in Persia, (today a part of Uzbekistan), and died in Hamadan, Iran). (Some sources actually state that he was born in Hamadan, and a good brief biography, linked below, claims he
was a Persian from Balkh). His mother was a native of the place; his father, a Persian
from Balkh, filled the post of tax-collector in the neighbouring town of Harmaitin, under Ibn Mansur, the Samanid amir of Bokhara. On the birth of Ibn Sina's
younger brother the family migrated to Bokhara, then one of the chief cities of the
Muslim world, and famous for a culture which was older than its conquest by the
Saracens.
Ibn Sina was put in charge of a tutor, and his precocity soon made him the marvel of his neighbours; he displayed exceptional
intellectual behaviour and was a child prodigy who had memorized the Qur'an by the age of 10 and
lots of Arabic poetry as well. From a
greengrocer he learnt arithmetic; and he began to learn more under a wandering
scholar who gained a livelihood by curing the sick and teaching the young. He turned to medicine at 16, and not only learned medical theory, but by gratuitous attendance on the sick had, according to
his own account, discovered new methods of treatment. The teenager achieved full
status as a physician at age 18 and found that: "Medicine is no hard and thorny science, like mathematics and metaphysics, so I soon made great
progress; I became an excellent doctor and began to treat patients, using approved remedies." The youthful physician's fame
spread quickly and he treated many patients without asking for payment.
However he was greatly troubled by metaphysical problems and in particular
the works of Aristotle. So, for the next year and a half he worked also at
philosophy, in which he encountered greater obstacles. In such moments of
baffled inquiry he would leave his books, perform the requisite ablutions, then go to the mosque, and continue in prayer till light broke on his difficulties. Deep into the night he would continue his
studies, stimulating his senses by occasional cups of wine, and even in his dreams problems
would pursue him and work out their solution. Forty times, it is said, he read through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his memory; but their meaning was hopelessly
obscure, until one day they found illumination, from the little commentary by Farabi,
which he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three dirhems. So great was his joy at the discovery, thus made by help of a
work from which he had expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed an alms upon the poor. Thus,
by the end of his seventeenth year his apprenticeship of study was concluded, and he went forth to find a market for his
accomplishments.
His first appointment was that of physician to the amir, who owed him his recovery from
a dangerous illness (997). Ibn Sina's chief reward for this service was access to the royal
library of the Samanids, well-known
patrons of scholarship and scholars. When the library was destroyed by fire not long after, the enemies of Ibn Sina accused him
of burning it, in order for ever to conceal the sources of his knowledge. Meanwhile, he assisted his father in his financial
labours, but still found time to write some of his earliest works.
At the age of twenty-two Ibn Sina lost his father. The Samanid dynasty came to its end in December 1004. Avicenna seems to have declined the offers of Mahmüd the Ghaznevid,
and proceeded westwards to Urjensh in the
modern Khiva, where the vizier, regarded as a friend of scholars, gave him a small
monthly stipend. But the pay was small, and Ibn Sina wandered from place to place through the districts of Nishapur and Merv to the borders of Khorasan, seeking an opening for his talents. Shams al-Ma'äli
Qäbtis, the generous ruler of Dailam,
himself a poet and a scholar, with whom he had expected to find an asylum, was about that date (1052) starved to death by his own revolted soldiery. Ibn Sina himself was at this season stricken down by a severe
illness. Finally, at Gorgan, near the Caspian, he met with a friend, who bought near his own house a dwelling in which he lectured on logic and astronomy. For this patron several of
his treatises were written; and the commencement of his Canon of Medicine also dates from his stay in Hyrcania.
Ibn Sina subsequently settled at Rai, in the vicinity of the modern Teheran, (present day capital of Iran), the home town
of Rhazes; where a son of the last amir, Majd Addaula, was nominal ruler, under the
regency of his mother. At Rai about thirty of his shorter works are said to have been composed. But the constant feuds which
raged between the regent and her second son, Amir Shamsud-Dawala, compelled the scholar to quit the place, and after a brief sojourn at Qazvin, he passed southwards to Hamadăn, where that prince had established himself. At first he
entered into the service of a high-born lady; but the amir, hearing of his arrival, called him in as medical attendant, and sent
him back with presents to his dwelling. Ibn Sina was even raised to the office of vizier (a kind of prime-minister); but the turbulent soldiery, composed of Kurds and Turks, mutinied against their nominal sovereign, and demanded that
the new vizier should be put to death. The Amir consented that he should be banished from the country. Ibn Sina, however,
remained hidden for forty days in a sheik's house, till a fresh attack of illness induced
the amir to restore him to his post. Even during this perturbed time he prosecuted his studies and teaching. Every evening
extracts from his great works, the Canon and the Sanatio, were dictated and explained to his pupils; among whom,
when the lesson was over, he spent the rest of the night in festive enjoyment with a band of singers and players. On the death of
the amir, Ibn Sina ceased to be vizier and hid himself in the house of an apothecary, where, with intense assiduity, he continued the composition of his works.
Meanwhile, he had written to Abu
Ya'far, the prefect of the dynamic city of Isfahan, offering his services; but
the new amir of Hamadăn, getting to hear of this correspondence, and discovering the place of Ibn Sina's concealment,
incarcerated him in a fortress. War meanwhile continued between the rulers of Isfahan and Hamadăn; in 1024 the former captured Hamadăn and its towns, and expelled the Turkish mercenaries. When the storm had passed Ibn Sina returned with the amir to Hamadăn, and carried on his literary
labours; but at length, accompanied by his brother, a favourite pupil, and two slaves, made his escape out of the city in the
dress of a Sufite ascetic. After a perilous
journey they reached Isfahan, and received an honourable welcome from the prince.
Late life
The remaining ten or twelve years of Avicenna's life were spent in the service of Abu Ya'far 'Ala
Addaula, whom he accompanied as physician and general literary and scientific adviser, even in his numerous campaigns.
During these years he began to study literary matters and philology, instigated, it is asserted, by criticisms on his style. But amid his restless
study Ibn Sina never forgot his love of enjoyment. Unusual bodily vigour enabled him to combine severe devotion to work with
facile indulgence in sensual pleasures. His passion for wine and women was almost as well known as his learning. Versatile,
lighthearted, boastful and pleasure-loving, he contrasts with the nobler and more intellectual character of Averroes. His bouts of pleasure gradually weakened his constitution; a severe colic, which seized him on the march of the army against Hamadăn, was checked by remedies so
violent that Ibn Sina could scarcely stand. On a similar occasion the disease returned; with difficulty he reached Hamadăn,
where, finding the disease gaining ground, he refused to keep up the regimen imposed, and resigned himself to his fate.
His friends advised him to slow down and take life moderately. He refused, however, stating that: "I prefer a short life
with width to a narrow one with length". On his deathbed remorse seized him; he bestowed his goods on the poor, restored
unjust gains, freed his slaves, and every third day till his death listened to the reading of the Qur'an. He died in June
1037, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Hamadăn.
Works
Ibn Sina is comparable to such greats as Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi himself. However, despite such glorious
tributes to his work, Ibn Sina is rarely remembered in the West today and his fundamental contributions to medicine and the
European reawakening go largely unrecognised.
Ibn Sina also wrote extensively on the subjects of philosophy, logic, ethics, metaphysics and other disciplines. All his works were written in Arabic - which was the de facto scientific language of that
time - and in Persian, Ibn Sina's own mother tongue. Of linguistic
significance even to this day are a few books that he wrote in nearly pure Persian language. Unlike Aquinas who more or less sanctified Aristotle as church dogma, Ibn Sina corrected him often, encouraging a
lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad (which was still a part of religious life at
that time). Accordingly he is one of the earliest pioneers of the scientific process as we know it today, his influence on that process being profound
at least, and perhaps even decisive.
About 100 treatises were ascribed to Ibn Sina. Some of them are tracts of a few pages, others are works extending through
several volumes. The best-known amongst them, and that to which Ibn Sina owed his European reputation, is his 14-volume "Canons of Medicine", which was
a standard medical text in Western Europe for seven centuries. It classifies and describes diseases, and outlines their assumed
causes. Hygiene, simple and complex medicines, and functions of parts of the body are
also covered. It asserts that tuberculosis was contagious, which was later
disputed by Europeans, but turned out to be true. It also describes the symptoms and complications of diabetes. An Arabic edition of the Canons appeared at Rome in 1593, and a Hebrew version at Naples in 1491. Of the Latin version there were
about thirty editions, founded on the original translation by Gerard
of Cremona. The 15th century has the honour of composing the great
commentary on the text of the Canon, grouping around it all that theory had imagined, and all that practice had observed.
Other medical works translated into Latin are the Medicamenta Cordialia, Canticum de Medicina, and the Tractatus
de Syrupo Acetoso.
It was mainly accident which determined that from the 12th to the
17th century Ibn Sina should be the guide of medical study in European
universities, and eclipse the names of Rhazes, Ali ibn al-Abbas and Averroes. His work is not essentially different from that of his predecessor Rhazes,
because he presented the doctrine of Galen, and through Galen the doctrine of Hippocrates, modified by the system of Aristotle. But the Canon of Avicenna is
distinguished from the Al-Hawi (Continens) or Summary of Rhazes by its greater method, due perhaps to the logical
studies of the former. The work has been variously appreciated in subsequent ages, some regarding it as a treasury of wisdom, and
others, like Averroes, holding it useful only as waste paper. In modern times it has been more criticized than read. The vice of
the book is excessive classification of bodily faculties, and over-subtlety in the discrimination of diseases. It includes five
books; of which the first and second treat of physiology, pathology and hygiene, the third and fourth
deal with the methods of treating disease, and the fifth describes the composition and preparation of remedies. This last part
contains some personal observations. He is, like all his countrymen, ample in the enumeration of symptoms, and is said to be
inferior to Ali in practical medicine and surgery. He introduced into medical theory
the four causes of the Peripatetic system. Of natural history and botany he pretended to no special
knowledge. Up to the year 1650, or thereabouts, the Canon was still used as a
textbook in the universities of Louvain and Montpellier.
Scarcely any member of the Arabian circle of the sciences, including theology,
philology, mathematics,
astronomy, physics, and music, was left untouched by the treatises of Ibn Sina, many of which probably varied little,
except in being commissioned by a different patron and having a different form or extent. He wrote at least one treatise on
alchemy, but several others have been falsely attributed to him. His book on animals was translated by Michael Scot.
His Logic, Metaphysics, Physics, and De Caelo, are treatises giving a synoptic view of Aristotelian
doctrine. The Logic and Metaphysics have been printed more than once, the latter, e.g., at Venice in 1493, 1495, and 1546.
Some of his shorter essays on medicine, logic, &c., take a poetical form (the poem on logic was published by Schmoelders in
1836). Two encyclopaedic treatises, dealing with philosophy, are often mentioned. The
larger, Al-Shifa' (Sanatio),
exists nearly complete in manuscript in the Bodleian Library and
elsewhere; part of it on the De Anima appeared at Pavia (1490) as the Liber
Sextus Naturalium, and the long account of Ibn Sina's philosophy given by Shahrastani seems to be mainly an analysis, and in many places a reproduction, of the Al-Shifa'. A shorter form
of the work is known as the An-najat
(Liberatio). The Latin editions of part of these works have been modified by the corrections which the monkish editors
confess that they applied. There is also a Philosophia Orientalis, mentioned by Roger Bacon, and now lost, which according to Averroes was pantheistic in tone.
In the museum at Bukhara, there are displays showing many of his writings,
surgical instruments from the period and paintings of patients undergoing treatment.
In Iran, he is considered a Persian hero. He is often regarded as one of the greatest Persians who have ever lived. Many of
his portraits and statues remain in Iran today. An impressive monument to the life and works of the man who is known as the
'doctor of doctors' still stands outside the Bukhara museum and his portrait hangs in the Hall of the Faculty of Medicine in the
University of Paris.
Ibn Sina was interested in the effect of the mind on the body, and wrote a great deal on psychology, likely influencing
Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Bajjah.
Along with Rhazes, Ibn Nafis,
Al-Zahra and Al-Ibadi, he is considered an important compiler
of Early Muslim medicine.
He is considered one of the four great Mutazilite scholars, the others being
Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd.
References
For Ibn Sina's life, see Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, translated by de Slane (1842); F. Wüstenfeld's
Geschichte der arabischen Aerzte und Naturforscher (Gottingen, 1840). For his medicine, see Sprengel, Histoire de la
Medecine; and for his philo;ophy, see Shahrastani, German translation, vol. ii. 213-332; K. Pranti, Geschichte der
Logik, ii. 318-361; A. Stöckl, Philosophie des Mittelalters, ii. ~3-58; S. Munk, Mélanges, 352-366; B. Haneberg
in the Abhandungen der philosophische-philologisches Classifikation der bayerischen Academie (1867); and Carra de Vaux,
Avicenne (Paris, 1900). For a list of extant works, C. Brockelmann's Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (Weimar,
1898), vol. i. pp. 452-458. (XV. W.; G. W. T.)
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