Avicenna

He faced chronic illness towards the latter days of his life, which only worsened with time. He breathed his last in June 1037 in the month of Ramadan. He was fifty eight years of age.

He was buried in Hamadan, Iran.

Not much is known about Avicenna’s early life except for the limited information mentioned in his autobiography written by his student Juzjani. Since there are no other proofs about his life, this autobiography becomes the only point of reference.

According to the autobiography, Avicenna was born in c. 980 in Afsana, a village near Bukhara to Setareg and Abdullah. While his mother was from Bukhara his father was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, Afghanistan.

At the time of birth of Avicenna, his father was a governor in one of the Samanid Nuh ibn Mansur's estates. Academically proficient, he was blessed with extraordinary intelligence and learning power.

By the age of ten, he had memorized the complete Quran and by fourteen, surpassed his teacher in elementary logic. He absorbed knowledge everywhere he went and from every person he met. He learned Indian arithmetic from an Indian grocer, and later enhanced his knowledge of the same with the help of a wandering scholar.

Subsequently, he took to self-studying, reading the works of Hellenistic authors. He also studied Islamic jurisprudence under Hanafi scholars. It was during these years that he found it difficult to understand the work of metaphysics by Aristotle. Though he memorized the work completely, its meaning still eluded him until he was enlightened one fine day.

At the age of sixteen, he turned his attention and focus towards medicine. He mastered the discipline not just in theory but in practicality as well. He discovered new methods of treatment for attending the sick. According to him, unlike metaphysics and mathematics, medicine was easy.

Interestingly, he treated the Sultan of Bukhara at a time when the trained court physicians were unable to master the feat. He cured the sultan from an unknown but dangerous ailment successfully.

It was his mastery over medicine and his ability to cure the emir that he was rewarded with an access to the royal library of the Samanids. The doors of the library opened a world of opportunity for him to explore as he was exposed to the profusion of science and philosophy and well-known patrons of scholarship and scholars

However, he could not gain the knowledge and wisdom for long as the library was burned down by his enemies who then accused him for the tragic incident. Unnerved by this behaviour of his opponents, he assisted his father in financial labor.

He turned to writing at the age of 21. In his early days, he wrote extensively on subjects like logic, ethics, and metaphysics and so on. Most of his works were either written in Arabic or Persian language

This Persian philosopher who belonged to the Islamic Golden Age wrote the book, ‘The Canon of Medicine’