In spite of the enormous difference between the science of his day and contemporary science, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) remains an essential link in the science and religion discourse. This is so because Ibn Sina addressed some of the most fundamental questions regarding the relationship between science and religion: How did the cosmos come into existence?; What is the role of God in the unfolding of human and cosmic destinies?; How does God interact with created beings? These and many other questions critical to contemporary discussions occupy a central position in Ibn Sina's philosophy, if not his science.

Life and writings

Abu'liAli al-Husayn Ibn 'Abd Allah Ibn Sina, whose name was Latinized as Avicenna during the Middle Ages, is known in the Muslim world as Ibn Sina. He was one of the most important representatives of the encyclopedic tradition of learning that was the hallmark of Islamic scholarship. Honorifically called al-Shaykh al-Ra'is (the Grand Shaykh), Ibn Sina was born in 980 C.E. in Afshana, his mother's home town near present-day Bukhara, Uzbekistan, during the reign of Amir Nuh ibn Mansur al-Samani.

We know about his life and works from two authoritative sources: an autobiography that covers the first thirty years of his life and a detailed life-sketch left behind by his disciple and friend al-Juzjani. Ibn Sina's father was a high official of the Samanid administration. His native language was Persian and he was first educated at home and then sent to learn jurisprudence from Isma'il al-Zahid. He studied Ptolemy's Almagest, Euclid's Elements, and logic with the famous mathematician Abu 'Abdallah al-Natili. By the time of his sixteenth birthday, Ibn Sina had mastered physics, medicine, metaphysics, and he was well-known as a physician. During the next two years, he was able to master Aristotle's metaphysics with the help of al-Farabi's commentary.

The first important turning point in the life of Ibn Sina came in the year 997 when, as a physician, he successfully treated the ruler of Bukhara, Nuh ibn Mansur; this opened the doors of one of the best libraries of its time to the young Ibn Sina. He spent the next several months in the palace library and saturated his mind with the best of medieval learning to such an extent that many years later he remarked to his disciple Juzjani, "I now know the same amount as then but more maturely and deeply; otherwise the truth of learning and knowledge is the same."

The earliest of Ibn Sina's surviving works date from 1001 when he was twenty-one; these include the twenty-volume Kitab al-hasil wa'l-mahsul (Book of sum and substance) dealing with all sciences, Kitab al-majmu' (Book of compilation) on mathematics, and Kitab al-birr wa'l- ithm (Book of virtue and sin) on ethics.

The second important turning point in Ibn Sina's life can be traced back to the year 1002 when his father died amidst political turmoil and war, and Ibn Sina left Bukhara for Jurjaniyah, then the capital of the Khwarazmian dynasty, where he found patronage in the court of the ruler, Abu'l Hasan Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Suhaili. It was for al-Suhaili that Ibn Sina wrote two treatises on mathematics and astronomy, Kitab al-tadarik li anwa' al-khata fi'l tadbir (Book of remedy for mistaken planetary positions) and Qiyam al-ard fi wasat al-sama' (The Establishment of earth in the middle of the sky). But Ibn Sina had to flee again because of political turmoil. He set out for Jurjan because of the reputation of its ruler as a lover of learning but when Ibn Sina arrived in the kingdom of Qabus in 1012, he discovered that the ruler had died. After ten years of moving from place to place, Ibn Sina finally settled in Ispahan in present day Iran, where he composed his masterpieces during a fifteen-year period of calm and peace. When Masud of Ghaza attacked Ispahan, this peace came to end, and Ibn Sina returned to Hamadan where he died of colic during the month of Ramadan in the year 1037.

Ibn Sina's surviving works include more than two hundred and fifty books, treatises, and letters on philosophy, cosmology, medicine, and religion. The most important among these are the voluminous Kitab al-Shifa' (Book of healing), Kitaba al-Najat (Book of salvation), Danishnama-yi iala'I (Divine wisdom), 'Uyun al-Hikmah, al-Isharat wa'l tanbihat (Remarks and admonitions), and the famous al-Qanun fi'l-tibb (The Canon of medicine).

Philosophy

Ibn Sina's philosophy is based on an ontological foundation in which God, the Necessary Being (wajib al-wujud), is the only being that is pure goodness, the source of all existence. Everything else derives its being (mahiyya) and its existence (wujud) from the Necessary Being and hence is contingent upon God. The contingent beings (mumkin al-wujud) are then divided into two kinds: (1) Those that are necessary in the sense that they cannot "not be"; they are contingent by themselves but receive from the First Cause the quality of being necessary. These beings are the simple substances (mujarradat). And (2) those beings that are only contingent, the composed bodies of the sublunary world that come into being and pass away. Ibn Sina's importance is based on the fact that he attempted to integrate Greek philosophy and Islam in an original synthesis that places God at the center of a philosophy that is essentially based on self-evident truths. According to Ibn Sina, the idea of "being" is so rooted in the human mind that it could be perceived outside of the sensible, though the first certitude apprehended by the human mind is the one that comes by means of sense perception.

In a prefiguration of the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), Ibn Sina based his philosophy on intuition (hads) and on the notion that the human soul is independent of body, and hence capable of apprehending itself directly. According to Ibn Sina, the Necessary Being produces a single Intelligence (because from the One can only come one). This Intelligence possesses a duality of being and knowledge; it introduces multiplicity into the world; from it can derive another Intelligence, a celestial soul, and a celestial body. Then, according to Ptolemy's system, this creative emanation descends from sphere to sphere as far as a tenth pure Intelligence, which governs our terrestrial world; this terrestrial world is unlike the other worlds because it is made of corruptible matter. This multiplicity surpasses human knowledge but is perfectly possessed and dominated by the active Intelligence, the tenth Intelligence. Ibn Sina demonstrated this in a highly original poetic narration, Hayy ibn Yakzan (The living, the son of the Awakened).

Among Ibn Sina's medical works, Canon of Medicine, is the ordered summation of all the medical knowledge up to his time. Divided into five books, this major work of Islamic medical tradition was used as the basic textbook for teaching medicine for seven centuries both in the East as well as in the West. Translated by Gerard of Cremona between 1150 and 1187, the Canon formed the basis of teaching at all European universities. It appears in the oldest known syllabus given to the School of Medicine at Montpellier, a bull of Pope Clement V dating from 1309, and in all subsequent ones until 1557. The Arabic text was edited at Rome in 1593; in all, eighty-seven translations, some incomplete, exist in various European languages.

Influence

Ibn Sina's influence on the subsequent development of intellectual thought is vast. In the Muslim world, his philosophy was instrumental in the emergence of Ishraqi (Illuminist) school of Suhrawardi. Ibn ' combined it with the Gnostic doctrines and Mulla Sadra integrated it into the intellectual perspectives of Shi'ism. In the West, medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas embodied some of Ibn Sina's proofs in the Catholic theology and although the Renaissance brought a violent reaction against him, Ibn Sina holds a secure place in the history of Western philosophy through his influence on major Christian philosophers.

See also ARISTOTLE; AVERROËS; ISLAM; ISLAM, CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION; ISLAM, HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION; THOMAS AQUINAS

MUZAFFAR IQBAL