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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: AUD-BAI |
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AVICENNA [Abu `Ali al-Husain ibn 'Abdallah ibn Sinai (980-1037), Arabian philosopher, was born at Afshena in the district of Bokhara. His mother was a native of the place; his father, a Persian from Balkh, filled the post of tax-collector in the neighbouring town of Harmaitin, under Nuh II. ibn Mansur, the Samanid amir of Bokhara. On the birth of Avicenna's younger brother the family migrated to Bokhara, then one of the chief
Porphyry and the first propositions of Euclid. But the pupil soon found his teacher to be but a charlatan, and betook himself, aided by commentaries, to master logic, geometry and the Almagest. Before he was sixteen he not merely knew medical theory, but by gratuitous attendance on the sick had, according to his own account, discovered new methods of treatment. For the next year and a half he worked at the higher philosophy, in which he encountered greater obstacles. In such moments of baffled inquiry he would leave his books, perform the requisite ablutions, then hie to the mosque, and continue in prayer till light broke on his difficulties. Deep into the night he would continue his studies, stimulating his senses by occasional cups of wine, and even in his dreams problems would pursue him and work out their solution. Forty times, it is said, he read through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his memory; but their meaning was hopelessly obscure, until one day they found illumination from the little commentary by Farabi (q.v.), which he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three dirhems. So great was his joy at the discovery, thus made by help of a work from which he had expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed an alms upon the poor. Thus, by the end of his seventeenth year his apprenticeship of study wasThere is, however, one true nest-building parrot, the grey-breasted parrakeet (Myopsittacus monachus), which constructs a huge nest of twigs. The true love-birds (Agapornis) may also be said to build nests, for they line their nest-hole with strips of pliant bark.concluded, and he went forth to find a market for his accomplishments. His first appointment was that of physician to the amir, who owed him his recovery from a dangerous illness (997). Avicenna's chief
At the age of twenty-two Avicenna lost his father. The Samanid dynasty came to its end in December 1004. Avicenna seems to have declined the offers of Mahmud the Ghaznevid, and proceeded westwards to Urjensh in the modern Khiva, where the vizier, regarded as a friend of scholars, gave him a small monthly stipend. But the pay was small, and Avicenna wandered from place to place through the districts of Nishapur and Mery to the borders of Khorasan, seeking an opening for his talents. Shams al-Ma`ali Qabus, the generous ruler of DaiIam, himself a poet and a scholar, with whom he had expected to find an asylum, was about that date (1012) starved to death by his own revolted soldiery. Avicenna himself was at this season stricken down by a severe illness. Finally, at Jorjan, near the Caspian, he met with a friend, who bought near his own house
He subsequently settled at Rai, in the vicinity of the modern Teheran
house
criticisms on his style. But amid his restless study Avicenna never forgot his love of enjoyment. Unusual bodily vigour enabled him to combine severe devotion to work with facile indulgence in sensual pleasures. His passion for wine and women was almost as well known as his learning. Versatile, light-hearted, boastful and pleasure-loving, he contrasts with the nobler and more intellectual character of Averroes. His bouts of pleasure gradually weakened his constitution; a severe colic, which seized him on the march of the army against Hamadan, was checked by remedies so violent that Avicenna could scarcely stand. On a similar occasion the disease returned; with difficulty he reached Hamadan, where, finding the disease gaining ground, he refused to keep up the regimen imposed, and resigned himself to his fate. On his deathbed remorse seized him; he bestowed his goods on the poor, restored unjust gains, freed his slaves, and every third day till his death listened to the reading of the Koran. He died in June 1037, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Hamadan. It was mainly accident which determined that from the 12th to the 17th century Avicenna should be the guide of medical study in European universities, and eclipse the names of Rhazes, Ali ibn al-Abbas and Avenzoar. His work is not essentially different from that of his predecessors Rhazes and Ali; all present the doctrine of Galen, and through Galen the doctrine of Hippocrates, modified by the system of Aristotle. But the Canon of Avicenna is distinguished from the Al-Hawi (Continens) or Summary of Rhazes by its greater method, due perhaps to the logical studies of the former, and entitling him to his surname of Prince of the Physicians. The work has been variously appreciated in subsequent ages, some regarding it as a treasury of wisdom, and others, like Avenzoar, holding it useful only as waste paper . In modern times it has been more criticized than read. The vice of the book is excessive classification of bodily faculties, and over-subtlety in the discrimination of diseases. It includes five books; of which the first and second treat of physiology, pathology
special
About roo treatises are ascribed to Avicenna. Some of them are tracts of a few pages, others are works extending through several volumes. The best-known amongst them, and that to which Avicenna owed his European reputation, is the Canon of Medicine; an Arabic edition of it appeared at Rome in 1593, and a Hebrew version at Naples in 1491. Of the Latin version there were about thirty editions, founded on the original
treatises, dealing with philosophy, are often mentioned. The larger, Al-Shifa' (Sanatio), exists nearly complete in manuscript in the Bodleian library and elsewhere; part of it on the De Anima appeared at Pavia (1490) as the Libel. Sextus Naturalium, and the long account of Avicenna's philosophy given by Shahrastani seems to be mainly an analysis, and in many places a reproduction, of the Al-Shifa'. A shorter form of the work is known as the An-najat (Liberatio). The Latin editions of part of these works have been modified by the corrections which the monkish editors confess that they applied. There is also a Philosophia Orientalis, mentioned by Roger Bacon, and now lost, which according to Averroes was pantheistic in tone. For Avicenna's life, see Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, translated by McG. de Slane (1842) ; F. Wiistenfeld's Geschichte der arabischen Aerzte and Naturforscher (Gottingen, 1840). For his medicine, see Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine; and for his philosophy, see Shahrastani, German trans. vol. ii. 213-332; K. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, ii. 318-361; A. Stockl, Phil. d. Mittelalters, ii. 23-58; S. Munk, Melanges, 352-366; B. Haneberg in the Abhandlungen der philos.-philolog. Class. der bayerischen Academie (1867) ; and Carra de Vaux, Avicenne (Paris, 1900). For list
Weimar
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