Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah ibn Sina was a physician and philosopher, author of many works in philosophy and medicine; Golius, in his Latin notes on al-Farghani's book, says he is commonly called "Avicenna" 1 2. He was born around 980 CE in a village near Bukhara, and Tareq al-Suwaidan says his family was of Persian origin 3 1 4. Ibn al-Imad relates from Ibn Khallikan that by the age of ten he had mastered the Qur'an and literature, then read logic with Abu Abd Allah al-Natili, then turned to medicine until leading physicians read under him when he was about sixteen 1 5. He treated the Samanid amir Nuh until he recovered and so entered his library, then served Shams al-Dawla as vizier in Hamadan, then went to Isfahan, where Ala al-Dawla treated him well 5. He died in Hamadan in June 1037 CE (Ramadan 428 AH) 6 1. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, says that he followed the old encyclopaedic ideal of joining philosophy with the study of nature, and that he saw human perfection in both knowledge and action; it calls him as illustrious a physician as he was a philosopher 7.
Among his books Ibn al-Imad lists al-Shifa', al-Najat, al-Isharat and al-Qanun, out of nearly a hundred works 8. The Qanun is an encyclopaedia of medicine and the Shifa' a broad philosophical compendium, and he wrote mostly in Arabic and also in Persian 6. Al-Suwaidan says the Qanun became one of the basic references of Europe's universities and was taught in several of them until the end of the seventeenth century 9. Sunni scholars judged him differently: al-Ghazali held that three of his teachings led to unbelief, while his medical works were widely used, and Ibn al-Imad reports that Ibn Khallikan praised him 6 10.
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