Home » Images » 0034 Pictures From History » CPA0016789

Uzbekistan: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā, commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna (c. 980-1037). France, early 17th century

Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā (Persian پورسينا Pur-e Sina [ˈpuːre ˈsiːnɑː] 'son of Sina'; c. 980, Afshana near Bukhara– 1037, Hamadan, Iran), commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine.

His most famous works are 'The Book of Healing', a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia, and 'The Canon of Medicine', which was a standard medical text at many medieval universities. 'The Canon of Medicine' was used as a text-book in the universities of Montpellier and Leuven as late as 1650. Ibn Sīnā's 'Canon of Medicine' provides a complete system of medicine according to the principles of Galen (and Hippocrates).

His corpus also includes writing on philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, as well as poetry. He is regarded as the most famous and influential polymath of the Islamic Golden Age.