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C. The Age of Learning
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5 Ibn Sina: Biographical Notes Introduction Perhaps more than any other individual, the renowned scientist and philosopher Abu ῾Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina (980–1037) personifies the marvelous scholarly achievements of the medieval Islamic world. Ibn Sina was born in a small village near Bukhara, where his father, an adherent to the Isma῾ili sect of Islam, served in the administration of one of the last Samanid rulers, Nuh ibn Mansur (r. 976–97). The family moved to Bukhara in 985, and it was there that Ibn Sina received his scholarly training. As a youth, Ibn Sina was a voracious reader and gifted student. He memorized the Qur᾿an even before he was ten years old, and by the time he turned fourteen his knowledge had surpassed that of all of the private tutors that his father had hired for him. He devoured the classics, mastering such fields as Aristotelian metaphysics, Euclidean geometry, and, without even the benefit of a teacher, the medical sciences. After healing his amir of a terrible illness that had eluded all other doctors in Bukhara, Ibn Sina was permitted access to the Samanid library. Ibn Sina was also an extremely prolific author, credited with 131 treatises, commentaries, and other works on philosophy, logic, astronomy, mathematics , theology, and more. Indeed, he is most famous for his work in medicine. His primary work in this field, Qanun fi’l-tibb (Canon of medicine), is an encyclopedic and orderly summary of much of the medical knowledge in the world at the time. In addition to introducing many revolutionary scientific techniques, it includes The Age of Learning C 36 Central Asia in the Early Islamic Period, Seventh–Tenth Centuries such pragmatic features as a pharmacological analysis of 760 different drugs, the plants from which they are derived, and their various applications. The Canon was translated into Latin in the twelfth century, and by some reports it remained the most important source for the medical sciences in Europe even into the seventeenth century. In Europe Ibn Sina was known by the Latinized version of his name, Avicenna, but his students referred to him as the Shaykh al-Ra’is, or Leader of the Wise Men. The following is taken from Gohlman’s authoritative translation of Ibn Sina’s autobiography, which includes the useful biographical continuation authored by al-Juzjani, one of Ibn Sina’s most devoted students. This excerpt details the great scholar’s early training and leaves off as the author was just entering his early twenties, at the very beginning of the eleventh century. These years marked the Turkic-Muslim Qarakhanid overthrow of Samanid authority in Bukhara and Mahmud of Ghazna’s rise to power in Afghanistan and Iran. In the tense environment that followed these events, Ibn Sina lost his patronage and his security, and was reduced to the life of an itinerant scholar. As the excerpt woefully concludes, “When I became great, no country could hold me; When my price went up, I lacked a buyer.” My father was a man of Balkh; he moved from there to Bukhara in the days of Amir Nuh ibn Mansur, during whose reign he worked in the administration, being entrusted with the governing of a village in one of the royal estates of Bukhara. [The village,] called Kharmaythan, was one of the most important villages in this territory. Near it is a village called Afshana, where my father married my mother and where he took up residence and lived. I was born there, as was my brother, and then we moved to Bukhara. A teacher of the Qur᾿an and a teacher of literature were provided for me, and when I reached the age of ten I had finished the Qur᾿an and many works of literature so that people were greatly amazed at me. My father was one of those who responded to the propagandist of the Egyptians and was reckoned among the Isma῾iliyya. From them, he, as well as my brother, heard the account of the soul and the intellect in the special manner in which they speak about it and know it. Sometimes they used to discuss this among themselves while I was listening to them and understanding what they were saying, but my soul would not accept it, and so they began appealing to me to do it [to accept the Isma῾ili doctrines.] And there was also talk of philosophy, geometry, and Indian calculation. Then he [my father] sent me to a vegetable...