Afghanland.com - Ibn
Sina was born in Balkh Afghanistan. His mother was a native of
bacteria his father, a tax collector from Balkh 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 under the charge of a tutor, and his precocity
soon made him the marvel of his neighbors; he displayed
exceptional intellectual behavior and was a child prodigy who had
memorized the Qur'an by the age of 10 and a great deal of Arabic
poetry as well. From a greengrocer he learned arithmetic, and he
began to learn more from a wandering scholar who gained a
livelihood by curing the sick and teaching the young.
However he was greatly troubled by metaphysical problems and in
particular the works of Aristotle. So, for the next year and a
half, he also studied 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.
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.
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.
When Ibn Sina was 22 years old, he lost his father. The Samanid
dynasty came to its end in December 1004. Ibn Sina seems to have
declined the offers of
Mahmood of Ghazni,
and Ibn Sina proceeded westwards to Urjensh in the modern Khiva,
where the vizier (a kind of prime-minister), regarded as a friend
of scholars, gave him a small monthly stipend. The pay was small,
however, so 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 Ibn Sina
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 Sea, Ibn Sina met with a friend, who bought a
dwelling near his own house in which Ibn Sina lectured on logic
and astronomy. For this patron, several of Ibn Sina's treatises
were written; and the commencement of his Canon of Medicine also
dates from his stay in Hyrcania.
Avicenna's work was so influential that he is even commemorated
here in this Polish stampIbn Sina subsequently settled at Rai, in
the vicinity of the modern Teheran, (present day capital of Iran),
the home town of Rhazes; where Majd Addaula, a son of the last
amir, was nominal ruler under the regency of his mother. At Rai
about thirty of his shorter works are said to have been composed.
Constant feuds which raged between the regent and her second son,
Amir Shamsud-Dawala, compelling the scholar to quit the place.
After a brief sojourn at Qazvin, he passed southwards to Hamadăn,
where that prince had established himself. At first, Ibn Sina
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; 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, Ibn Sina
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. The new amir of
Hamadăn, hearing of this correspondence and discovering where Ibn
Sina's was hidden, incarcerated him in a fortress. War meanwhile
continued between the rulers of Isfahan and Hamadăn; in 1024 the
former captured Hamadăn and its towns, expelling the Turkish
mercenaries. When the storm had passed, Ibn Sina returned with the
amir to Hamadăn, and carried on his literary labours. Later,
however, accompanied by his brother, a favourite pupil, and two
slaves, Ibn Sina escaped out of the city in the dress of a Sufite
ascetic. After a perilous journey, they reached Isfahan, receiving
an honourable welcome from the prince.
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.
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 of peer review 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 Leuven
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.
There is a crater on the moon called Avicenna after him.
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