Abu `Ali Husain b. `Abdullah Ibn Sina, Balkhi, better known as Avicenna in the West, was the greatest of all medieval Muslim physicians. Also known as Al-Shaykh Al-Ra’as, and celebrated in the Western world as ‘the father of modern medicine,’ his is the most illustrious name in Arabic medical history after al-Razi. While Al-Razi was more of a physician than Ibn Sina, Ibn Sina was more of a philosopher. The author of 450 books on a variety of subjects including Philosophy and Medicine, Ibn Sina had a direct impact on the intellectual rebirth of Europe. George Sarton considers him to be the most famous scientist of Islam and one of the most famous of all races, places and times. He was one in the famed quartet of Mu`tazilite scholars, others being Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. Of the first three, it is said that the harmonization of Greek philosophy with Islam begun by al-Kindi, an Arab, was continued by al-Farabi, a Turk, and completed in the East by Ibn-Sina, a Persian.
George Sarton considers Ibn Sina to be the most famous scientist of Islam and one of the most famous of all races, places and times.
Ibn Sina was about five years old, when his family moved to Bukhara, where his father was appointed as a governor of Kharmayathnah, a village in the suburbs. His father, whose home was a meeting place for the local scholars, diligently educated him at Bukhara. While certainly acquainted with Isma`ili tenets, Ibn Sina however refused to adopt them. A precocious child with an extraordinary intelligence and memory, and who overtook his teachers at the age of fourteen, he had memorized theQur’an and a great deal of Arabic poetry by the age of ten. He also studied Arabic literature and sciences including Islamic law, astronomy, medicine, logic and philosophy by the age of eighteen. Learning arithmetic from a greengrocer, he then began to learn more from a wandering scholar who gained a livelihood by curing the sick and teaching the young. In times of mental agitation over metaphysical problems and over the works of Aristotle, in particular, Ibn Sina left his books, performed the ritual ablution (Wudu), prayed at the Mosque, and continued in prayer till light broke into his heart.
In Physics Ibn Sina made the important observation that if the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by the luminous source, the speed of light must be finite. He propounded an interconnection between time and motion, and also made investigations on specific gravity and used an air thermometer.
He was introduced to various religious, philosophical and scientific teachings at a very early age. For example, he was introduced to the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Isma`ilism by his father. He was also exposed to the Sunni doctrine, as his Fiqh teacher, Isma`il al-Zahid, was well versed with both Sunni as well as the Twelver-Imam Shi`ism. In addition, he was given some background in logic, geometry and astronomy by his other teacher, Abu `Abdallah al-Natili. He exercised his independence of thought very quickly. First, he dispensed with teachers, continuing his education on his own; and second, he did not adhere to any of the doctrines to which he was exposed. Rather, he drew on various sources, selecting only what he considered convincing. His system was unique, however, and cannot be said to follow any of the prevalent schools. Even al-Shifa, which reflects a strong Aristotelian tendency, is not purely Aristotelian, as is usually considered. The theory of certainty, for example which is basically Neo-Platonism, and that of prophecy, which is Islamic in essence, are but two examples of many non-Aristotelian teachings. Al-Juzjani confirms the uniqueness of this work and asserts that it is nothing but the product of Ibn Sina’s own mind. Ibn Sina himself makes a point, stressing his originality in this work, especially, in Logic and Physics.
Turning to medicine at 16, not only did he learn theoretical medicine, but also discovered new methods of treatment. A perfect physician by age 18, he is reported to have said: ‘Medicine is not a hard and difficult science like Mathematics and Metaphysics, and so I soon made great progress. I became an excellent doctor and began to treat patients, using approved remedies.’ His first appointment was that of physician to the Samanid Amir Nuh b. Mansur when he contracted a dangerous illness (in 997 CE). Ibn Sina cured him and was allowed to use the royal library of the Samanids as a reward for this service.
After his father’s death, Ibn Sina left Bukhara for Jurjaniyah and offered his services to the Khawarzmian dynasty. In this court, he wrote Kitab al-Tadaruk li-Anwa` al-Khata’ fi’l-Tadbir and Qiyam al-’Ard fi Wasat al-Sama’ on mathematics and astronomy respectively. Meanwhile, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, envious of the brilliance of the Khawarazim court demanded Avicenna’s attendance in his own royal court which boasted of men of the caliber of Firdawsi, the father of the Persian language. However, Avicenna chose to escape to Gurgan and then to Jurjan. Joined here by his lifetime companion, Juzjani, he wrote Kitab-al-Mukhtasar al-Awsat, Kitab al-Mabda’ w’al-Ma’ad, and Al-Arsad al-Kulliyyah, along with chapters which later formed parts of Al-Najat and Al-Qanun.
Later, he left for Ray, near modern Teheran, and settled down there. He wrote about 30 of his shorter works at Ray. This was followed by a short stay at Qazwin after which he left for Hamadan. In Hamadan, he first entered into the services of an aristocratic lady, but when the Amir Shamsud-Dawla heard of his arrival, he called Ibn Sina to the palace to be appointed as physician, and sent him back with presents. He was subsequently appointed the vizier. But a soldiers’ rebellion against him saw him being imprisoned. However, with the Amir falling ill yet again, Ibn Sina was released and returned to his position. While he cured the Amir of his illness, some problems crept up between the two and the Amir decided to banish him from the country. Ibn Sina, however, went into hiding for 40 days until the Amir fell ill yet again. He was then recalled and reinstated as the vizier. It was around this time that he wrote his two philosophical treatises: Kitab al-Shifa (The Book of Remedies) and Al-Adwiyyat al-Qalbiyyah (Remedies of the Heart). After Shamsud-Dawlah’s death, his son `Ali came to power and asked Ibn Sina to continue as vizier. But Ibn Sina, disinterested in the offer, wished to work with Abu Ja`far `Ala al-Dawla, the ruler of Ishfahan, and another son of the Amir. Refusing the post therefore, Ibn Sina hid himself in the house of an apothecary. It was thus in this time of hiding that he completed his philosophical work, Kitab al-Shifa.
Meanwhile, he sent a letter to Abu Ja`far offering his services. However, the new Amir of Hamadan came to know of this and discovering his hiding place, imprisoned him. During this period, a war erupted between Isfahan and Hamadan. Hamadan was defeated and its rulers expelled in 1024 CE. Ibn Sina was released following this political change and subsequently escaped to Isfahan disguised as a Sufi and joined Abu Ja`far. He spent the remaining ten or twelve years of his life as a physician of Abu Ja`far ‘Ala al-Dawla and as his advisor in matters of science and literature.
During these years he began to study literary matters and philology, and composed numerous works including the Kitab al-Najat (The Book of Deliverance) and the Danishnama-e-`Alai (The Alai Book of Knowledge) which he wrote in Farsi. Besides this, his passion for wine and women also increased. This love of enjoyment weakened his health and he soon became a patient affected by a severe colic during the army’s march against Hamadan. Upon reaching Hamadan his condition worsened. His friends advised him to give up such habits and to take the pleasures of life moderately. But he refused their advice, saying: “I prefer a short life with depth to a narrow one with length”. At last, and on the verge of death, he is said to have felt remorse and repented. Furthermore, he donated his belongings to the poor, freed his slaves and listened to the reading of the Qur’an every third day till his death. He died in June 1037 CE (428 H) in Hamadan, Persia, at the age of fifty-eight and was buried at the same place.
Philosophy:
Although less absolute and more disputed, Ibn Sina’s influence in philosophy was more lasting, inasmuch as St. Thomas Aquinas was influenced by certain of his proofs in his making of Catholic theology. But, Ibn Sina, already treated with the medical men, was indebted to al-Farabi in his philosophical views. In the judgment of Ibn Khallikan, “No Muslim ever reached in philosophical science the same rank as al-Farabi; and it was by the study of his writings and by the imitation of his style that Ibn Sina attained proficiency and rendered his own work so useful.” In the East, the people interested in philosophy were mostly partisans of the system of Ibn Sina. But unlike the Persian al-Suhrawardi, who incorporates into his own system many Zoroastrian concepts, Ibn Sina makes no attempt to substantiate his claim that the Oriental philosophy derives from an ancient eastern philosophical tradition.
Ibn Sina said, “When an initiate (salik) practices enough ascetic discipline and combines it with spiritual efforts his or her soul and secret (sirr) become a mirror which reflects the Truth (al-Haqq).”
Any study of Ibn Sina is incomplete without delving into the meaning of his Oriental philosophy (Al-Hikmah al Mashriqiyyah) which has drawn the attention of many Western scholars from L. Massignton to H. Corbin who provided the most extensive plausible reconstruction of it. This aspect of Ibn Sina’s thoughts is an important link in the uninterrupted tradition of Islamic philosophy marking a notable stepping stone from the synthesis of Ibn Sina to the illuminationist doctrines of Suhrawardi, who in his Qisas al-Ghurabat al-Gharbiyyah (the Story of the Occidental Exile) refers explicitly to the Hayy ibn Yaqzan and considers his work to be the achievement of what Ibn Sina had set out to accomplish without reaching the ultimate goal, implying that the Oriental philosophy was a prelude for Hikmat al-Ishraq, or Theosophy of the Orient of Light formulated a century and a half later by Suhrawardi. Ibn Sina’s Oriental philosophy belongs to the same world as that of Suhrawardi’s Ishraq as was considered by such later figures as Mulla Sadra and Sabziwari.
In Ibn Sina’s Oriental philosophy, it is not so much that the Aristotelian cosmos is repudiated as it is transformed. The outline and content of the universe remain the same; but reason becomes wedded to the intellect, the external cosmos becomes interiorized, facts become symbols and philosophy becomes a veritable Sophia (in the Gnostic view of creation, the material world is created through a sort of error or accident by the Aeon – emanation of god, essentially – called Sophia. Sophia comes from the Greek for ‘wisdom’) inseparable from the gnosis which Ibn Sina defended so vigorously in the ninth chapter entitled Fi Maqamat al-`Arifin (On the Stations of the Gnostics)
Physics:
In Physics, he made the important observation that if the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by the luminous source, the speed of light must be finite. He propounded an interconnection between time and motion, and also made investigations on specific gravity and used an air thermometer. More of an Aristotelian in Physics, Ibn Sina was inferior to al-Razi, who had discovered the existence of vacuum, which he himself denied. However, he opposed the theory of the transmutation of metals, and hence alchemy because, in his opinion, the metals differed in a fundamental sense.
But it is of interest to note that the discussion of the soul takes up a large portion of Ibn Sina’s physics. Ibn Sina, about whom it has been said that he came to the Gnostic path after having been affected by the powerful gaze of the Sufi master, Abu Yusuf al-Hamdani, in the streets of Hamadan, is not at all rationalistic in his view of the soul and intellect. He says: Al-Nafs al-Natiqah (the Human Soul) is empty in terms of intelligible forms. When it contacts the active intellect, these forms pour into it and it eventually becomes the abode of the forms. All the intelligibles (Ma`qulat) which are, at once, potential and veiled have been actualized by the illumination of the Active Intellect. Ibn Sina treats the Active Intellect as the disembodied intelligence that governs the terrestrial sphere. When the soul contacts the Active Intellect’s process of knowing, then naturally it can receive something from the Active Intellect according to its purity. The soul receives the reflection of the First Being through the participation of the celestial world. Mystical knowledge is the continuation and perhaps the more advanced stage of natural rational knowledge. What distinguishes mystical knowledge from rational knowledge is not its forms but its objects. The revelation of the unseen (Ghayb) can occur in intense thought. But sometimes it can come within the experiences of a Gnostic (`Arif). Ibn Sina also observes in another text that “When an initiate (Salik) practices enough ascetic discipline and combines it with spiritual efforts, his or her soul and secret (Sirr) become a mirror which reflects the Truth (al-Haqq).”
Music:
After al-Farabi, it was Ibn Sina who contributed the most important works in Arabic on the theory of music. A composer of music himself, he abridged earlier works and included in his Al-Shifa a study of music which was translated to Latin and became a text-book in Western Europe. In music, his contribution – an improvement over Farabi’s work – was far ahead of knowledge prevailing elsewhere on the subject. Doubling with the fourth and fifth was an impo rtant step towards the harmonic system and doubling with the third seems to have also been allowed. Ibn Sina observed that in the series of consonances represented by (n+1)/n, the ear is unable to distinguish them when n = 45.
Mathematics:
One of the four parts of Kitab al Shifa is devoted to mathematics and Ibn Sina includes astronomy and music as branches of mathematics within this encyclopedic work. In fact, he divided mathematics into four branches, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music, and he then subdivided each of these topics. He subdivided geometry into geodesy, statics, kinematics, hydrostatics, and optics. Astronomy, he subdivided into astronomical and geographical tables, including the calendar. He divided arithmetic into algebra, and Indian addition and subtraction. Music is subdivided into musical instruments.
Medicine
Determining the causes of health and diseases,Ibn Sina believed that the human body cannot be restored to health unless the causes of both health and disease are determined. He stated that Medicine (Tibb) is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body when in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost, and when lost, is likely to be restored. In other words, medicine is the science whereby health is conserved and an art whereby it is restored after being lost.
Logic:
Ibn Sina considered logic as the key to philosophy, whose pursuit is the key to happiness. Ibn Sina opens his logical treaties with a discussion of expressions, beginning with single expressions, the smallest elements of the explanatory phrase and proof. He also contributed to psychology, geology, natural history, chemistry, astronomy, economics and politics.
His most famous works are Kitab al-Shifa(The Book of Healing), Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), Al-Najah (Deliverance), `Uyun al-Hikmah (Sources of Wisdom),Dansishname-e-`Aalai (The Book of Science Dedicated to `Ala al-Dawla) and Al-Isharat wa al Tanbihat (Remarks and Admonitions).
Kitab al-Shifa:
: This is the most detailed philosophical work of Ibn Sina that deals with Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics. Logic is divided into nine parts, physics into eight and mathematics into four. Physics (with the exception of the two parts dealing with animals and plants, which were completed after mathematics) was the first to be written, followed by Metaphysics, then Logic, and finally Mathematics. Logic and Metaphysics have been printed more than once, the latter, e.g. at Venice in 1493, 1495, and 1546 CE. Bringing Aristotelian and Platonian philosophy together with Islamic theology, Kitab al-Shifa divides knowledge into the theoretical and practical. The theoretical, which seeks knowledge of the truth, includes physics, mathematics and metaphysics; and practical that seeks knowledge of good, includes ethics, economics and politics. The purpose of theoretical philosophy is to perfect the soul through knowledge alone. The purpose of practical philosophy is to perfect the soul through knowledge of what must be done, so that the soul acts in accordance with this knowledge. Theoretical philosophy is knowledge of things that exist not owing to our choice and action. Practical philosophy is knowledge of things that exist on account of our choice and action. His philosophy synthesizes Aristotelian tradition, Neo-Platonic influences and Muslim theology.
Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb:
Ibn Sina’s Canon was used in the Universities of Europe for full 500 years as a text book.
Considered the most famous single book in the history of medicine, Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) consists of five parts. Translated into Latin a number of times, and once in Naples in 1491 CE into Hebrew, it was considered the most important medical source both in the West for 500 years (i.e., until the beginning of the 11/ 17th century) and continues to be the primary source of Islamic medicine wherever it is practiced to this day. The Canon of Medicine set the standards for Medicine in Europe for centuries and was used in Universities as a text book for full 500 years. While classifying and describing diseases, and outlining their assumed causes, hygiene, simple and complex medicines, and functions of body parts are also covered. It asserts that tuberculosis is contagious: a fact later disputed by Europeans, but which subsequently proved to be true. It also describes the symptoms and complications of diabetes. An Arabic edition of the Canon appeared in Rome in 1593 CE but the Latin version alone had about 30 editions, founded on the original translation by Gerard of Cremona. The book, a partial translation of which was made into English recently, distinguishes Mediastinitis from Pleurisy and recognizes the contagious nature of Phthisis and the spreading of disease by water and soil. It gives a scientific diagnosis of Ankylostomiasis and attributes it to an intestinal worm. Its materia medica considers some 760 drugs. In the words of Dr. Ostler it has remained “a medical bible for a longer period than any other work.” Ibn Sina’s other medical works translated into Latin are the Medicamenta Cordialia, Canticum de Medicina, and the Tractatus de Syrupo Acetoso.
Al-Isharat wal Tanbihat:
Consisting of logic, physics and metaphysics this is the most mature and comprehensive philosophical work of Ibn Sina. It closes with a treatment of mysticism: a treatment that may be classified more properly under ethics – considered in its Sufi sense – than metaphysics.
Al-Najah:
A summary of Al-Shifa, it is in four parts: Logic, Physics and Metaphysics, prepared by Ibn Sina, and Mathematics by al-Juzjani.
`Uyun al-Hikmah:
Also known as Al-Mujaz (Epitome), it was probably intended for class instruction in logic, physics and metaphysics, owing to its simplicity, clarity and brevity.
Dansishnama-e-`Alai:
Also in four parts, this book is significant in that it is the first work of Islamic peripatetic philosophy in Persian. In addition, he left a number of literary works like Hayy ibn Yaqzan (The Living Son of the Vigilant), Risalat al-Tayr (The Epistle of the Bird), Risalah fi al-`Ishq (Essay on love) and Tahsil al-S`adah (Attainment of Happiness). His most important poems are Al-Urjuzah fi al-Tibb (An iambic poem on medicine), Al-Qasidatu al-Muzdawijah (An ode in couplets) and Al-Qasidatu al-`Ayniyyah (An ode whose verses end with the letter `ayn). He also wrote a number of Persian poems. All his works were written in Arabic (which was the actual scientific language of that time) and in Persian, Ibn Sina’s own mother tongue. Of linguistic significance even to this day, are a few books that he wrote in pure classical Persian.
He wrote at least one treatise on alchemy, but several others have been falsely attributed to him. While his book on animals was translated by Michael Scot, Ibn Sina was also interested in the effect of the mind on the body, and wrote a great deal on psychology, in the process influencing Ibn Tufayl, an Andalusian Arab Muslim philosopher, physician and court official, and Ibn Bajjah, an Andalusian Arab Muslim philosopher and physician known in the West as Avempace.
Considered a Persian hero in Iran, he is often regarded as one of the greatest Persians who have ever lived. Many of his portraits and statues remain in Iran today. An impressive monument to the life and works of the man who is known as the ‘doctor of doctors’ still stands outside the Bukhara museum and his portrait hangs in the Hall of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Paris. A crater on the moon is named Avicenna after him.
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