PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH Avicenna and his Successors The greatest of all Muslim philosophers was Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna (980–1037) He was a Persian, born near Bokhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), who was educated in Arabic and wrote most of his works in that language He is reputed to have mastered logic, mathematics, physics, and medicine in his teens He began to practise as a doctor when he was 16 In his autobiography, edited by his pupil Juzjani, he describes how he then took up philosophy: For a year and a half, I devoted myself to study I resumed the study of logic and all parts of philosophy During this time I never slept the whole night through and did nothing but study all day long Whenever I was puzzled by a problem I would go to the mosque, pray, and beg the Creator of All to reveal to me that which was hidden from me and to make easy for me that which was diYcult Then at night I would return home, put a lamp in front of me, and set to work reading and writing.15 Thus, he tells us, he had mastered all the sciences by the time he was 18 At the age of 20 he published an encyclopedia—the Wrst of Wve in the course of his life, four in Arabic and one in Persian Avicenna’s medical skill was much in demand; he was summoned to treat the sultan of Bokhara and made full use of his splendid library Between 1015 and 1022 he was both court physician and vizier to the ruler of Hamadan Later he occupied a similar position in the court of Isfahan He left behind about 200 works, of which more than 100 have survived His Canon of Medicine summarizes much classical clinical material and adds observations of his own; it was used by practitioners in Europe until the seventeenth century Avicenna’s main philosophical encyclopedia was called in Arabic Kitab-al-Shifa, or ‘Book of Healing’ It is divided into four parts, of which the Wrst three treat of logic, physics, and mathematics respectively The second part includes a development of Aristotle’s De Anima The fourth part, whose Arabic name means ‘Of Divine Things’, was known in the medieval West as his Metaphysics When translated into Latin in Toledo around 1150 it had an enormous inXuence on the Latin philosophy of the Middle Ages 15 Quoted in J L Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 57 37