Avicenna (Ibn Sina)

Who is Avicenna (Ibn Sina)?

Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abdallah ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, was a Persian polymath widely regarded as one of the most significant physicians, philosophers, and scientists of the Islamic Golden Age. He was born around 980 in a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan, then part of the Persian Samanid realm) and died in 1037 in Hamadan, in present-day Iran, where his tomb is now a national monument. A precocious scholar, he mastered medicine and philosophy in his youth and served various rulers as physician and administrator. His most influential work, The Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb), synthesized Greek, Persian, and Arabic medical knowledge and remained a standard textbook in universities across the Islamic world and Europe for centuries. His vast philosophical encyclopedia, The Book of Healing (Kitab al-Shifa), covered logic, natural science, mathematics, and metaphysics, developing an influential system that fused Aristotelian and Neoplatonic thought with Islamic theology and shaped later thinkers in both East and West.

Sources: Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, c. 1025) · Avicenna, The Book of Healing (Kitab al-Shifa) · Encyclopaedia Iranica, entry 'Avicenna'