Ibn Sina

980-1037

Arab Physician and Philosopher

Known in the West as Avicenna, the Arab thinker Ibn Sina was among the most influential figures in European philosophy and science during a period of half a millennium. As a philosopher, he played a highly significant role in affecting a synthesis between Greek science and the Muslim faith, an equation in which European thinkers would substitute Christianity for Islam with equally powerful results. As a physician, he dominated thought during the period from the late twelfth to the late seventeenth century, during which time his Canon of Medicine was the single most important medical text in all of Europe.

Born in Afshana in what is now Afghanistan, Ibn Sina (whose full name was Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd-Allah ibn Sina) was raised in Bukhara, now part of Uzbekistan. He displayed an early talent as a student, and at the age of 10 had already read the entire Koran. He gained other useful knowledge from an Indian teacher who exposed him to Indian principles of mathematics, including the numeral zero, first used by Hindu mathematicians.

Encouraged by his family, who placed a high value on study, Ibn Sina began his formal education at age 16, and had soon mastered the available texts on medical theory, natural science, and metaphysics. He then supplemented his book learning by beginning a medical practice, in which he discovered a great deal more through empirical study.

Appointed as court physician to the sultan of Bukhara, Ibn Sina gained access to the latter's library, and by the age of 18 had consumed all its books. His study of logic led him to Aristotle (384-322 b.c.), whose writings initially upset him because he found himself unable to square the Greeks' pagan teachings with those of the Koran. One day, however, his reading of another Islamic scholar helped him unlock the seeming contradiction, and he was so overjoyed that he gave alms to the poor in gratitude.

When Bukhara's sultan died, Ibn Sina was forced to wander. At one point he earned a living lecturing on logic and astronomy at Jurjan near the Caspian Sea. Later he moved to Ray, near what is now the Iranian capital of Tehran, and there established a thriving medical practice. An attack by Turks forced him to relocate to Hamadan in western Iran, where he came under the protection of the emir Shams al-Daula and developed a following of devoted students.

With the death of the emir, Ibn Sina once again found his future uncertain, so he beseeched the ruler of nearby Isfahan for a governmental position. When the new emir of Hamadan learned of this, he had Ibn Sina imprisoned. Later, Ibn Sina gained his release and escaped to Isfahan, where he spent the remainder of his career in service to the emir, Ala al-Daula.

Ibn Sina wrote some 100 books on a variety of subjects, including an encyclopedia of nearly two dozen volumes. Most important to the scientific world were his Kitab al Shifa and al-Qanun fi al Tibb. The former was a philosophical encyclopedia informed by an Aristotelian worldview—though an Aristotelianism tempered with both Muslim and Platonic spirituality. Due to an uneven translation, the Shifa had a limited impact in the West, whereas the Qanun—known in Europe as the Canon—would have an influence too great to overestimate.

The Canon consisted of five books on medical theory, simple drugs, special pathology and therapeutics, general diseases, and pharmacopoeia. In it, Ibn Sina shows the influence not only of Aristotle—whose ideas pervade, even in the book's organizational structure—but of the ancient physicians Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 b.c.), Dioscorides (c. 20-c. 90), and Galen (c. 130-c. 200) as well. This synthesis of ancient and medieval ideas would have an enormous impact in Europe, and for this some of the credit must be given to Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114-1187) for his highly useful translation.

During his latter career in service to Ala al-Daula, Ibn Sina went on a number of military expeditions with the ruler, and thus had an opportunity make additions to the botany and zoology covered in the Shifa. Like many Muslims of his time, Ibn Sina owned slaves, one of whom turned against him when Ibn Sina was in his fifties. Hoping to steal his money, the slave put opium into Ibn Sina's food; but with his knowledge of medicine, he was able to treat himself and recover. The drug overdose weakened him, however, and in 1037 he had a relapse and died.

JUDSON KNIGHT