Avicenna Facts
Avicenna Facts
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| Interesting Avicenna Facts: |
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| There is only one known autobiography of Avicenna's life, recorded by one of his students, and without other texts to compare to it is impossible to know how much of it is accurate. |
| According to his autobiography, he was born in a village in modern-day Uzbekistan, in the summer of 980 CE. |
| His father was a governor and a scholar in the region, which led to Avicenna receiving a very thorough education, at which he excelled due to his intelligence and astounding memory. |
| This memory led to his astounding ability to memorize and recite the entire Quran by the age of ten. |
| While still a teenager, Avicenna undertook a complex study of Aristotle's works and an accompanying commentary by al-Farabi; this led to his interest in philosophy, and his habit of praying in the mosque over difficult conundrums until he came to a resolution. |
| By age 16 he began studying medicine and become a physician by age 18, likening the study and understanding of medicine to be less difficult to comprehend than math or other fields. |
| He achieved wide acclaim for his ability to treat patients, and often did not require payment for his services. |
| By 997 CE, Avicenna had treated and healed the emir, Nuh II, from a dangerous disease and was therefore appointed his personal physician. |
| This position allowed him unlimited access to the royal library, as well as to the patrons of learning who frequented it. |
| Following the fall of the Samanid dynasty, Avicenna spent the next many years wandering from position to position in search of opportunities to learn and write. |
| He is known to have written some 450 works in his lifetime, and about 240 of those works have survived. |
| Of the remaining writings of Avicenna, almost two hundred of those works are on philosophy and medicine. |
| Avicenna is remembered for his enormous undertaking, The Book of Healing, which served as a catalog of reference for medicine. |
| He also penned The Canon of Medicine, which provided more of an overall picture of medical understanding in his day. |
| His texts were used in medical schools throughout medieval scholarly institutions, and were still in use as medical textbooks as late as 1650. |
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