Avicenna

Persian polymath, physician and philosopher (c. 980–1037)

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Lived 980–1037, aged 57

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Wikipedia
162 languages
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Global rank
#241
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Era
980–1037
Aged 57

Summary

Updated 2026-09-01

A Persian polymath from the Islamic Golden Age whose medical encyclopedia stayed in use at European universities for six centuries. His synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and empirical observation shaped how medieval Christendom understood both the body and the mind.

Biography

About

Ibn Sina was born around 980 and moved through the courts of various Iranian rulers during the Islamic Golden Age, writing in both Arabic and Persian. He produced The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, which became standard curriculum at medieval European universities and remained in use until 1650. His method combined empirical observation with Aristotelian logic—a fusion that made him one of the Muslim world's greatest Peripatetic philosophers. Of the 450 works attributed to him, around 240 survive: 150 on philosophy, 40 on medicine, plus…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Avicenna

Avicenna

said1020

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

— "On Medicine, (c. 1020)

Avicenna

saidundated

Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped.

— Metaphysics, Book I

Avicenna

saidundated

An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.

— As quoted in Familiar Medical Quotations (1968) by Maurice B. Strauss

Avicenna

saidundated

God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change.

— As quoted in 366 Readings From Islam (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer

Avicenna

saidundated