Thirty Fifth Issue: Ibn Sina

I know I said I was going to talk about China, but I realized I had bitten off more than I could chew, so I will get to that eventually, but first I want to talk about Ibn Sina and Ibn Battuta (Ibn Battuta was originally to be included in this issue too but his story is too long and will be in the next one).

Ibn Sina was known as Avicenna in the west and that’s what you’ll find him under on Wikipedia. He was known for his work in medicine, but he also wrote on philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, and poetry. Here's what he looked like, according to a drawing made in the 13th  century:

 

 

Ibn Sina worked during the Islamic Golden Age, which built on Persian, Indian, Greek and Roman texts of the time. There was scholarly and cultural development in Bukhara and Baghdad, which were cultural capitals of the Islamic world. Ibn Sina was born around the year 980 near Bukhara (which is now in Uzbekistan). His mother was from Bukhara and his father was an Ismaili scholar from what is today Afghanistan. Scholars are not sure if Ibn Sina himself was Sunni, Shia, or Ismaili.

Ibn Sina memorized the Quran when he was ten, and then learned Indian arithmetic from a local Indian grocer. He learned some more from a wandering healer, and studied Islamic law with a local Sunni scholar. He learned some philosophy from a local philosopher as well. He had some trouble with the Metaphysics of Aristotle, and studied it for over a year, praying and dreaming about it too. When he was sixteen, Ibn Sina decided to learn medicine. At eighteen he became a qualified medicine and said it was super easy compared to math and physics.

Ibn Sina got a job in 997 after he helped the emir recover from illness. He became his personal physician, and got to access the royal library. It burned down, and his enemies accused him of doing it so that nobody else could learn what he had learned. Ibn Sina also helped his dad out and wrote a few books in his spare time. When he was twenty-two, his father died, and the current ruling dynasty came to an end. He traveled to Turkmenistan, where the vizier said he’d pay him a monthly stipend, but it wasn’t enough, so he kept traveling.

Ibn Sina got sick in 1012 and recovered near the Caspian Sea, where he met a friend who helped him find a place to live and let him lecture on logic and astronomy. He then went to a village called Rey, near what is today Tehran. He wrote about thirty of his books here. He was under the protection of the emir, but the emir’s son and mother kept fighting each other so he left, going to Hamadan, also in Iran. He worked for the emir as a medical attendant. He fell out of his good graces and hid when he called for him to be banished, but then when the emir got sick he wanted Ibn Sina’s help so he got back in his good graces. During all this he kept writing and teaching his students.

When the emir died, Ibn Sina kept himself hidden in the house of a local apothecary, and wrote to the emir of Isfahan, offering his services to him. The new emir of Hamadan found out about this and imprisoned him in a fortress. Isfahan and Hamadan kept fighting, and Isfahan won in 1024. Ibn Sina returned with the defeated emir to Hamadan and kept doing his work. Eventually he escaped from the city entirely, with his brother, his favorite student, and two slaves. They made it to Isfahan, and the prince welcomed them happily.

The next ten years of his life Ibn Sina worked for him as a doctor and scientific advisor, studying literature as well. He got sick and went home to Hamadan. He knew he was going to die, and his friends told him to slow down and live life more moderately. Ibn Sina wouldn’t change his lifestyle though, saying “I prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length". When he was about to die he gave all of his riches to the poor, freed his slaves, and read the Quran over and over until he died in 1037 when he was fifty eight years old. Here's a picture of him on some money from Tajikistan:

 

 

Ibn Sina wrote about logic, ethics, and metaphysics. He wrote in Arabic and Persian, and liked to criticize Aristotle. He wrote a Book of Healing that became popular in Europe when it was translated into Latin in the 1200s, and that’s when he became known as Avicenna. He influenced Thomas Aquinas, among others. Ibn Sina made an argument for the existence of God, and he was a devout Muslim. His goal was to prove that God existed and that he had created the world using reason and logic. He saw the prophets as “inspired philosophers” and linked his philosophy with religious ideas.

He wrote a five volume medical encyclopedia called The Canon of Medicine, which was the standard medical textbook in both the Islamic world and Europe until the 1700s. He believed that all diseases and disorders had natural causes, something that the Europeans wouldn’t figure out until the Enlightenment, seven whole centuries later. He wrote on geology and the formation of mountains, ad discussed the early scientific method as well as the importance of experimentation. He wrote on logic, and agreed with Aristotle that a fact cannot be true and false at the same time, saying: "Anyone who denies the law of noncontradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." Fair enough.

He argued that light had a speed, and wrote about how astrology wasn’t real and couldn’t actually tell the future. Ibn Sina invented steam distillation, which was basically a precursor of aromatherapy. He didn’t believe in alchemy, and he wrote mostly in poetry. He was recognized by both East and West as one of the greatest intellectuals in history. In Iran he is considered one of the greatest Persians in history. There are many schools and colleges all around the area that are named for him. He even has a crater on the moon named Avicenna after him.

Stay tuned for some cool information about another guy who lived just a little after him, Ibn Battuta coming next week!