Avicenna
Ibn Sina, commonly known in the West as Avicenna, was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world. He was a seminal figure of the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian rulers, and was influential to medieval European medical and Scholastic thought.
Often described as the father of early modern medicine, Avicenna's most famous works are The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia that became a standard medical text at many medieval European universities and remained in use as late as 1650.
Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna's corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, and works of poetry. His philosophy was of the Peripatetic school derived from Aristotelianism, of which he is considered among the greatest proponents within the Muslim world.
Avicenna wrote most of his philosophical and scientific works in Arabic but also wrote several key works in Persian; his poetry was written in both languages. Of the 450 works he is believed to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.
Name
Avicenna is a Latinized version of the Arabic patronym ibn Sīnā, indicating that he is the descendant of a line of men going back to one named Sina. Specifically, Avicenna was the great-great-grandson of a Sina. His full formal Arabic name is Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn bin ʿAbdallāh bin al-Ḥasan bin ʿAlī bin Sīnā al-Balkhī al-Bukhārī.Historical context
Avicenna created an extensive corpus of works during what is commonly known as the Islamic Golden Age, in which the translations of Byzantine, Greco-Roman, Persian, and Indian texts were studied extensively. Greco-Roman texts translated by the Kindi school were commented on, redacted and developed substantially by Islamic intellectuals, who also built upon Persian and Indian mathematical systems, astronomy, algebra, trigonometry and medicine.The Samanid Empire in the eastern part of Persia, Greater Khorasan, and Central Asia, as well as the Buyid dynasty in the western part of Persia and Iraq, provided a thriving atmosphere for scholarly and cultural development. Under the Samanids, Bukhara rivaled Baghdad for cultural capital of the Muslim world. There, Avicenna had access to the great libraries of Balkh, Khwarazm, Gorgan, Rey, Isfahan and Hamadan.
Various texts show that Avicenna debated philosophical points with the greatest scholars of the time. Nizami Aruzi described how before ibn Sina left Khwarazm, he had met al-Biruni, Abu Nasr Mansur, Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi and ibn al-Khammar. The study of the Quran and the Hadith also thrived, and Islamic philosophy, fiqh "jurisprudence", and kalam "speculative theology" were all further developed by ibn Sina and his opponents at this time.
Biography
Early life and education
Avicenna was born in in the village of Afshana in Transoxiana to a Persian family. The village was near the Samanid capital of Bukhara, which was his mother's hometown. His father Abd Allah was a native of the city of Balkh in Bactria. An official of the Samanid bureaucracy, he had served as the governor of a village of the royal estate of Harmaytan near Bukhara during the reign of Nuh II. Avicenna also had a younger brother. A few years later, the family settled in Bukhara, a center of learning, which attracted many scholars. It was there that Avicenna was educated, which early on was seemingly administered by his father.Although both Avicenna's father and brother had converted to Isma'ilism, he himself did not follow the faith. He was instead a Hanafi Sunni, the same school followed by the Samanids.
Avicenna was first schooled in the Quran and literature, and by the age of 10, he had memorized the entire Quran. He was later sent by his father to an Indian greengrocer, who taught him arithmetic. Afterwards, he was schooled in fiqh by the Hanafi jurist Ismail al-Zahid. Sometime later, his father invited the physician and philosopher al-Natili to their house to educate ibn Sina. Together, they studied the Isagoge of Porphyry and possibly the Categories of Aristotle as well. After Avicenna had read the Almagest of Ptolemy and Euclid's Elements, al-Natili told him to continue his research independently. By the time Avicenna was eighteen, he was well-educated in Greek sciences. Although ibn Sina only mentions al-Natili as his teacher in his autobiography, he most likely had other teachers as well, such as the physicians Qumri and Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi.
Career
In Bukhara and Gurganj
At the age of seventeen, Avicenna was made a physician of Nuh II. By the time Avicenna was at least 21 years old, his father died. He was subsequently given an administrative post, possibly succeeding his father as the governor of Harmaytan. Avicenna later moved to Gurganj, the capital of Khwarazm, which he reports that he did due to "necessity". The date he went to the place is uncertain, as he reports that he served the Khwarazmshah, the ruler of Khwarazm, the Ma'munid ruler Abu al-Hasan Ali. The latter ruled from 997 to 1009, which indicates that Avicenna moved sometime during that period.He may have moved in 999, the year in which the Samanid Empire fell after the Kara-Khanid Khanate captured Bukhara and imprisoned the Samanid emir Abd al-Malik II. Due to his high position and strong connection with the Samanids, ibn Sina may have found himself in an unfavorable position after the fall of his suzerain.
It was through the minister of Gurganj, Abu'l-Husayn as-Sahi, a patron of Greek sciences, that Avicenna entered into the service of Abu al-Hasan Ali. Under the Ma'munids, Gurganj became a centre of learning, attracting many prominent figures, such as ibn Sina and his former teacher Abu Sahl al-Masihi, the mathematician Abu Nasr Mansur, the physician ibn al-Khammar, and the philologist al-Tha'alibi.
In Gorgan
Avicenna later moved due to "necessity" once more, this time to the west. There he travelled through the Khurasani cities of Nasa, Abivard, Tus, Samangan and Jajarm. He was planning to visit the ruler of the city of Gorgan, the Ziyarid Qabus, a cultivated patron of writing, whose court attracted many distinguished poets and scholars. However, when Avicenna eventually arrived, he discovered that the ruler had been dead since the winter of 1013. Avicenna then left Gorgan for Dihistan, but returned after becoming ill. There he met Abu 'Ubayd al-Juzjani who became his pupil and companion. Avicenna stayed briefly in Gorgan, reportedly serving Qabus's son and successor Manuchihr and resided in the house of a patron.In Ray and Hamadan
In, Avicenna went to the city of Ray, where he entered into the service of the Buyid amir Majd al-Dawla and his mother Sayyida Shirin, the de facto ruler of the realm. There he served as the physician at the court, treating Majd al-Dawla, who was suffering from melancholia. Avicenna reportedly later served as the "business manager" of Sayyida Shirin in Qazvin and Hamadan, though details regarding this tenure are unclear. During this period, Avicenna finished writing The Canon of Medicine and started writing his The Book of Healing.In 1015, during Avicenna's stay in Hamadan, he participated in a public debate, as was customary for newly arrived scholars in western Iran at that time. The purpose of the debate was to examine one's reputation against a prominent resident. The person whom Avicenna debated against was Abu'l-Qasim al-Kirmani, a member of the school of philosophers of Baghdad. The debate became heated, resulting in ibn Sina accusing Abu'l-Qasim of lack of basic knowledge in logic, while Abu'l-Qasim accused ibn Sina of impoliteness.
After the debate, Avicenna sent a letter to the Baghdad Peripatetics, asking if Abu'l-Qasim's claim that he shared the same opinion as them was true. Abu'l-Qasim later retaliated by writing a letter to an unknown person in which he made accusations so serious that ibn Sina wrote to Abu Sa'd, the deputy of Majd al-Dawla, to investigate the matter. The accusation made towards Avicenna may have been the same as he had received earlier, in which he was accused by the people of Hamadan of copying the stylistic structures of the Quran in his Sermons on Divine Unity. The seriousness of this charge, in the words of the historian Peter Adamson, "cannot be underestimated in the larger Muslim culture".
Not long afterwards, Avicenna shifted his allegiance to the rising Buyid amir Shams al-Dawla, the younger brother of Majd al-Dawla, which Adamson suggests was due to Abu'l-Qasim also working under Sayyida Shirin. Avicenna had been called upon by Shams al-Dawla to treat him, but after the latter's campaign in the same year against his former ally, the Annazid ruler Abu Shawk, he forced Avicenna to become his vizier.
Although Avicenna would sometimes clash with Shams al-Dawla's troops, he remained vizier until the latter died of colic in 1021. Avicenna was asked to stay as vizier by Shams al-Dawla's son and successor Sama' al-Dawla, but he instead went into hiding with his patron, Abu Ghalib al-Attar, to wait for better opportunities to emerge. It was during this period that Avicenna was secretly in contact with Ala al-Dawla Muhammad, the Kakuyid ruler of Isfahan and uncle of Sayyida Shirin.
It was during his stay at Attar's home that Avicenna completed The Book of Healing, writing 50 pages a day. The Buyid court in Hamadan, particularly the Kurdish vizier Taj al-Mulk, suspected Avicenna of correspondence with Ala al-Dawla, and as a result, had the house of Attar ransacked and ibn Sina imprisoned in the fortress of Fardajan, outside Hamadan. Juzjani blames one of ibn Sina's informers for his capture. He was imprisoned for four months until Ala al-Dawla captured Hamadan, ending Sama al-Dawla's reign.