Ibn Sina was born near Bukhara and showed extraordinary ability from childhood. By sixteen he was treating patients. By eighteen he had read every book available to him. He spent his adult life moving between Persian courts, serving as physician and vizier, writing at night, sometimes on the run. His Canon of Medicine was the standard textbook in Europe for five centuries. His Book of Healing synthesized Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ideas into a system that made the existence of God a matter of logical necessity. His thought dominated Islamic philosophy for generations and provoked Al-Ghazali's famous attack.
Born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara in what is now Uzbekistan. His father was a government official. The boy was extraordinary from the start: he had memorized the Quran by age ten.
Words
“The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired until one knows the causes.”
