IBN SĪNĀ (AH 370–428/980–1037 CE), more fully Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā, known in Latin as Avicenna; Muslim philosopher and physician. Ibn Sīnā was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara. Today a city in Uzbekistan, Bukhara was at that time the capital of the Samanid rulers, for whom Ibn Sīnā's father worked.

Education

Ibn Sīnā grew up in a bilingual environment; his native language was Farsi (Persian), but the language of his education was Arabic. The heritage of these two cultures was to lead to the two very different lines of his influence on later thinkers.

The education provided for Ibn Sīnā by his father was very wide-ranging, encompassing both Muslim religious studies and secular subjects from the Arabic, Greek, and Indian traditions. He began by...