IBN Sina (A.H. 370-428/980-1037 C.E.), more fully Abu 'Ali al-Husayn ibn 'Abd Allah ibn Sina, known in Latin as Avicenna was a Muslim philosopher and physician. He was was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara. Now a city in Uzbekistan, Bukhara was at that time the capital of the Samanid rulers, for whom Ibn Sina's father worked.

Ibn Sina grew up in a bilingual environment. His native language was Farsi, but the language of his education was Arabic. The heritage of these two cultures was to lead to two very different lines of influence on later thinkers. The education provided for Ibn Sina 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 memorising the Qur'an and much of the didactic literature known as adab, then went on to study Muslim jurisprudence (fiqh). His father and brother were followers of the Isma'ili branch of Shi'i Islam, which encouraged the study of hermetic philosophy, Neoplatonism, and mathematics. Ibn Sina did not become an Isma'ili but did study these subjects, as well as "Indian calculation", probably meaning the use of the Hindi (Arabic) numerical system. When he reached ten years of age, his father hired a tutor to teach him Greek philosophy and science. For the next several years he studied Aristotle's logic, Euclid's ge­ometry, and Ptolemy's astronomy and quickly sur­passed his tutor in his knowledge of these subjects.

From age fourteen or fifteen Ibn Sina continued his studies on his own, reading the texts and commentaries in the natural sciences, metaphysics, and medicine. He excelled in this last subject, to the point that he was practicing and teaching it by the time he was sixteen. He completed his education in the following year and a half, reviewing and mastering all the branches of philosophy: logic, mathematics, natural science (or physics), and metaphysics. He was helped in his understanding of metaphysics by the commentary of Abu Nasr al-Farabi (d. 950 C.E.), whose commentaries on Greek philosophy and original writings had a great influence on Ibn Sina. In his attack on both Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, the great theologian al-Ghazali (d. 1111) was to consider their views virtually identical.

Ibn Sina's entry into public life began during this period of study, when he was summoned to treat the Samanid emir in Bukhara and then became part of his court. He was to spend the rest of his life— the next forty years—as a courtier, with all of the vicis­situdes of fortune which that position usually entails. He held both medical and political positions in a number of courts in areas that are today part of Iran and Central Asia, usually being forced to leave a given territory by "necessity," as he laconically calls it. At several courts he was an important minister, but the jealousy of rivals and an undoubtedly arrogant attitude toward his intellectual inferiors (virtually everyone he met) brought about his downfall and imprisonment or hasty escape from most of these courts.

During the time of this active political involvement, Ibn Sina was also engaged in writing a large and influential corpus of works on medicine and all branches of philosophy. Many of these works have been lost, and many that exist today are unedited, so we cannot speak with certainty about his philosophical development. Most of his major writings have survived, however, with the exception of Al-insaf (The Judgment), in which he compared the Eastern and Western views of Aristo­tle's philosophy. This work was lost during his lifetime; it might have answered some of the questions about his philosophy which exist even today. The two most influ­ential of his works, Al-qanun fi al-tibb (The Canon of Medicine) and Al-shifa' (The Healing [of the Soul]), were written over a period of years and were intended to be compendia of their subjects, medicine and philosophy. Most of his other major writings that can be dated were composed during the last thirteen years of his life, which he spent in Isfahan or on campaign with its ruler, as his official physician and courtier. During this period he composed some works in Farsi, such as the Danish-namah-i 'Ala'i ('Ala'i Philosophy), and oversaw the translation of some of his earlier Arabic treatises into Farsi. In all, more than 130 works by Ibn Sina have sur­vived to this day, many of them found only in manu­script form in Middle Eastern libraries. Ibn Sina was interested in all branches of knowledge, religious and secular. Once, in order to avenge a slighting remark about his knowledge of Arabic philology, he spent three years studying the subject, then wrote several letters imitating exactly the greatest prose stylists in the language, and concluded his study by writing a book on the subject. Most of his surviving writings are of this sort: accounts of one aspect or another of the learning of his time, often in response to questions posed by his contemporaries. His philosophy is presented more systematically in his major works: the Shifa'; the Najat (Salvation [from Error]), a selection of the most important parts of the Shifa'; Isharat wa-al-tanbihat (Instructions and Remarks), the last of his major writings; and the Danish-namah-i 'Ala'i. The Shifa', for example, is divided into four parts, treating logic, physics , mathematics, and metaphysics; the first three parts are further subdivided, thus covering virtually all of the subjects of philosophy.

As can be seen from his major writings, Ibn Sina wished not merely to study all knowledge but to synthesize it as well. Aristotle's philosophy, Neoplatonism, Islamic religious teachings, and quite possibly Zoroastrian concepts were all present in his intellectual background, and traces of all of these traditions can be found in his thought. In his cosmology, for example, he adopts the Neoplatonic theory of emanation from a Necessary Existent through a series of Intelligences to the Active Intelligence, from which emanate the vegetative, animal, and rational souls and the material basis of the sublunary world. This emanation is necessary, since it is implicit in the nature of the Necessary Existent, as is its absolute goodness.

The Necessary Existent is the only exception to Ibn Sina's absolute distinction between essence and existence. For the Necessary Existent, essence and existence are identical; for all other existents they are separate. Even though the Necessary Existent is the Prime Cause of the created universe, the latter is independent of the Necessary Existent, which has no control over the good and (necessary) evil resulting from the process of emancipation. Thus he employs Neoplatonic ideas in his attempt to harmonise the theory of Aristotle, which regards matter as coeternal with the Prime Mover, and the belief in creation by God ex nihilo held by Muslims. He was later criticized by Ibn Rushd (Averroes; d. 1198 C.E.) for not following Aristotle more closely and was ac­cused of heresy by al-Ghazali for not accepting creation ex nihilo.

In his exposition of the relationship between human beings and the Necessary Existent, Ibn Sina likewise advocates a position that draws upon Neoplatonism to synthesise the various positions current in his time. Each human being, he states, is composed of body, soul and intelligence. The highest aspect of the human being, the intelligence, desires to reach its perfection, to return to the source from which it has emanated. Passing back through the various stages of emanation, which Ibn Sina compares to passing through the stages of the mystical path, the individual intelligence ultimately achieves union with the Necessary Existent. There are similarities between this view and Aristotle's position that the greatest human happiness is found in the Godlike activity of contemplation. However, in no sense could a part of the human soul become identified with the Prime Mover in Aristotle's system. Ibn Sina is closer to an Islamic position in his discussion of the relationship of humans to the Necessary Existent. But it is not the orthodox theological doctrine, which stresses the absolute separateness of human beings and God, that he approaches in his account. Rather, it is the Sufi, or mystical, view of the Divine-human relationship. His mysticism differs from that of most Sufis, however, in his argument that the 'arif ("knower", or, perhaps, "gnostic") can attain the ma'rifat Allah ("knowledge of God") by his own will; he does not need God's grace to achieve this state of illumination.

In recent years, studenls of Ibn Sina's religious thought have found traces of Zoroastrian influence, in addition to the influences of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Islamic ideas. His theory of the role of the Intelli­gences in the universe bears a resemblance to the angelology of Zoroastrianism, and much less to the traditional Islamic view of angels as God's vicegerents and messengers. The individual must awaken to the knowledge that his intellect is a part of the world of the angels; at that point the mystical journey begins. Ibn Sina's view of the material universe as eternal, evil (mixed with good), and completely determined is related not only to the tenets of Gnosticism and Manichaeism that still survived in the Iran of his time, but also to the late Zoroastrian doctrine of Zurvanism, which held even God to be bound by fate. In his devel­opment of a philosophical vocabulary in Farsi, he shows a knowledge of Zoroastrian terminology and adapts it to his own system.

In canto 4 of his Inferno Dante includes Ibn Sina with the great pagan writers of antiq­uity in Limbo, the highest circle of Hell. Muslims were generally seen as schismatics— Dante in fact puts Mu­hammad and 'Ali among the schismatics in canto 28— so it is surprising to encounter Ibn Sina alongside Homer, Plato, and Aristotle. Dante placed him in this high position quite likely because of the great influence his writings had exerted on Christian thought over the previous century and a half. His influence on Dante's ideas was especially strong.

Ibn Sina's influence in the West began almost as soon as his works began to be translated in twelfth-century Spain. Most of the Shifa' was translated into Latin be­fore 1150 C.E., and it presented Christian thinkers with their first exposure to a completely coherent cosmology and system of metaphysics. It had a seductive attraction because of its comprehensiveness and was in some respects easier to accept than Aristotle's philosophy. Because Aristotle's works were being translated at the same time as those of Ibn Sina, and because some Neoplatonic works were attributed to Aristotle (e.g., the Liber de causis, a collection of extracts from Proclus's Elements of Theology), it was not always easy to distinguish the ideas of the two philosophers. During the thirteenth century, however, students of their works and commentators on them were able to separate the two men and identify the spurious works attributed to them. At this point it was discovered by Christian theologians, as al-Ghazali had alleged over a century earlier, that Ibn Sina's cosmology and metaphysics posed a danger to orthodox monotheism, whether Christian or Muslim.

Ibn Sina's philosophical system was too well constructed to refute completely and too widespread to ignore. Virtually all of the scholastic theologians accepted some of his ideas, although none went so far as to become "Latin Avicennists." The Christian writer who came closest to adopting his philosophy completely was his twelfth-century translator, Dominicus Gundassalinus, who wrote a number of works which borrowed heavily from the psychology and metaphysics of Ibn Sina, which Gundissalinus had translated into Latin. Gundissalinus's works, as well as those of Ibn Sina, were viewed critically by William of Auvergne (or William of Paris, c. 1180-1249 C.E.). He accepted Ibn Sina's distinction between essence and existence but strongly re­jected his emanationist creation theory, including the hierarchy of Intelligences existing between humans and God. In this rejection he was followed by Albertus Magnus (1206-1280 C.E.) and Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274 C.E.).

The two most important Christian thinkers strongly influenced by Ibn Sina were the British Franciscans Roger Bacon (c. 1214-after 1292 C.E.) and John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308 C.E.). Bacon did not compose a systematic theology but, rather, wrote a scientific encyclopædia re­sembling in many ways Ibn Sina's Shifa'. Neither Ibn Sina nor Roger Bacon wished to compare each point with the views of the ancient philosophers; as Ibn Sina told his chief disciple, Juzjani, "If you would be satisfied with my composing a work in which I would set forth what, to me, is sound in these sciences, without debating with those who disagree or devoting myself to their refutation, I would do that" (Gohlman, 1974. p. 55). Bacon also believed that Ibn Sina was, after Aristotle, the prince of philosophy. Even so, Bacon could not follow Ibn Sina completely: he substitutes God for Ibn Sina's creating Active Intelligence, for example. Duns Scotus adopted Ibn Sina's definition of metaphysics as the study of being qua being, and his discussion of universals was largely based on that of Ibn Sina as well.

Influence in the Muslim World

Ibn Sina had a number of disciples who continued studying and teaching his philosophical system. The orthodox Islamic revival of the eleventh century C.E., however, crowned by al-Ghazali's attack on the philosophers, limited the spread of his ideas to those areas not under the control of the Seljuk dynasty. The fact that he did not found a school like the academy of Lycaeum also restricted his influence to the occasional scholar or group of scholars. It is ironic that his philosophical writings became a part of the curriculum of European universities but not of the madrasahs (colleges) established in the Muslim world.

Ibn Sina's influence on Muslim writers, especially in the Farsi-speaking area of the Muslim world, was, nev­ertheless, important. The most significant impact of his thought was on Sufism, more specifically on the Ishraqi (Illuminationist) school of Sufism founded by Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi (1153-1191 C.E.). The source of this influence was not his great encyclopædia of philosophy, the Shifa', but rather several short treatises, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, The Bird, On Love, and Salman and Absal, as well as the last sections of his Isharat. There is a dispute among contemporary scholars concerning the extent to which Ibn Sina intended these works to be interpreted esoterically as mystical treatises. The Ishraqi Sufis, however, read them in this way and combine them with the obviously mystical theosophy of Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi (1165-1240 C.E.) and the ideas of his contemporary Suhrawardi to form the most influential school of mystical philosophy in the Farsi-speaking Islamic world.

The aspect of Ibn Sina's writings that attracted Suhrawardi and his followers was his Eastern (mashriqiyah) philosophy. The Arabic words for "Eastern" and "Illuminationist" (mushriqiyah) are written identically; according to Suhrawardi they mean the same thing in Ibn Sina's works. Unfortunately, the most important of his writings on Eastern philosophy, Judgement, was lost, but his references to the East in Hayy ibn Yaqzan and The Bird convinced Suhrawardi that Ibn Sina was on the right track. Suhrawardi translated the latter into Farsi and wrote a companion work to Hayy ibn Yaqzan, which he called Western Exile. In his basic trea­tise Hikmat al-ishraq (Illumination Wisdom), Suhrawardi points out that the sources of wisdom that Ibn Sina lacked were precisely those writings of Zoroastrianism, Pythagoreanism, and Hermetism which were both Eastern and Illuminationist. He rejects Ibn Sina's distinction between essence and existence, saying that existence has no reality outside the intelligence that ab­stracts its essence. Ibn Sina's view of form and matter, similar to that of Aristotle, is transformed by Suhrawardi into light and darkness; the human soul is composed of light. He interprets Ibn Sina's treatises to be symbolic accounts of the return of the soul/light to the Supreme Light, and wrote several treatises that de­scribe this journey of the soul to God.

The Ishraqi tradition was most influential in Iran af­ter the establishment of the Safavid regime (1499-1722 C.E.) and its adoption of Shi'i Islam as the official state reli­gion. In Isfahan, the Safavid capital after 1598 C.E., the two greatest exponents of the Ishraqi school were Mir Damad (d. 1631 C.E.) and his pupil Mulla Sadra (1571/2-1640 C.E.). Mir Damad wrote a commentary on the metaphysics of the Shifa' in which he combined the teachings of Ibn Sina and Suhrawardi, particularly in the area of angelology. Mulla Sadra, the greatest of the Ishraqi theosophers, founded a school that continues to the present day. His synthesis of philosophy, revelation, and illumination follows Ibn Sina's principle of the primacy of existence and its division into necessary, possible, and impossible existents. He departs from Ibn Sina's views and relies more on Ibn al-'Arabi, the Neoplatonists, and Islamic revelation in holding that the sciences of the "otherworld", learned by illumination and revelation, are true knowledge and far superior to the sciences of this world. Just as Europeans had accepted only one aspect of Ibn Sina's thought, the philosophical/scientific, the Ishraqiyah selected only the other aspect, the mystical, for inclusion in their system of belief.

The best account of Ibn Sina's life and works is his brief autobiography and its continuation by his disciple Juzjanu, which I have edited and translated as The Life of Ibn Sina (Albany, N.Y., 1974). A survey of his writings and their influence on the European and Islamic worlds is found in Soheil M. Afnan's Avicenna: His Life and Works (London, 1953); a work emphasising his influence on Christian and Jewish thought is Avicenna: Scientist and Philosopher, edited by G. M. Wickens (London, 1952). The best analysis of his metaphysical theories is Parviz Morewedge's The Metaphysica of Avicenna (ibn Sina) (New York, 1973), which is a translation of the Ilahiyat (Metaphysics) of the Danish-namah-i 'Ala'i with an extensive commentary and comparison with Ibn Sina's other works on metaphysics. The negative side of the debate over interpreting his works eso­terically is presented by Amélie-Marie Goichon in such works as the introduction and notes in her French translation of the Isharat: Livre des directives et remarques (Paris, 1951) and Le récit de Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Paris, 1959). The case for an esoteric interpretation is made in Henry Corbin's Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, translated by Willard R. Trask (New York, 1960); the connection between Ibn Sina and the Ishraqi school is shown in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's Three Muslim Sages: Avicenna, Suhrawardi, Ibn 'Arabi (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).

William E. Gohlman

Here is a slightly more up-to-date bibliography, taken from the Muslim Philosophy website:

Ibn Sina (980-1037) Sirat al-shaykh al-ra'is (The Life of Ibn Sina), ed. and trans. W.E. Gohlman, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1974. (The only critical edition of Ibn Sina's autobiography, supplemented with material from a biography by his student Abu 'Ubayd al-Juzjani. A more recent translation of the Autobiography appears in D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition: Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works, Leiden: Brill, 1988.)

Ibn Sina (980-1037) al-Isharat wa-'l-tanbihat (Remarks and Admonitions), ed. S. Dunya, Cairo, 1960; parts translated by S.C. Inati, Remarks and Admonitions, Part One: Logic, Toronto, Ont.: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1984, and Ibn Sina and Mysticism, Remarks and Admonitions: Part 4, London: Kegan Paul International, 1996. (The English translation is very useful for what it shows of the philosopher's conception of logic, the varieties of syllogism, premises and so on.)

Ibn Sina (980-1037) al-Qanun fi'l-tibb (Canon on Medicine), ed. I. a-Qashsh, Cairo, 1987. (Ibn Sina's work on medicine.)

Ibn Sina (980-1037) Risalah fi sirr al-qadar (Essay on the Secret of Destiny), trans. G. Hourani in Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. (Provides insights into a neglected area of Ibn Sina's thought.)

Ibn Sina (980-1037) Danishnama-i 'ala'i (The Book of Scientific Knowledge), ed. and trans. P. Morewedge, The Metaphysics of Avicenna, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. (This is a translation of a metaphysical work in Persian.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-Shifa' (Healing). (Ibn Sina's major work on philosophy. He probably began to compose al-Shifa' in 1014, and completed it in 1020. Critical editions of the Arabic text have been published in Cairo, 1952-83, originally under the supervision of I. Madkour; some of these editions are given below.)
Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-Mantiq (Logic), Part 1, al-Madkhal (Isagog), ed. G. Anawati, M. El-Khodeiri and F. al-Ahwani, Cairo: al-Matba'ah al-Amiriyah, 1952; trans. N. Shehaby, The Propositional Logic of Ibn Sina, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973. (Volume I, Part 1 of al-Shifa'.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-'Ibarah (Interpretation), ed. M. El-Khodeiri, Cairo: Dar al-Katib al-'Arabi, 1970. (Volume I, Part 3 of al-Shifa'.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-Qiyas (Syllogism), ed. S. Zayed and I. Madkour, Cairo: Organisme Général des Imprimeries Gouvernementales, 1964. (Volume I, Part 4 of al-Shifa'.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-Burhan (Demonstration), ed. A.E. Affifi, Cairo: Organisme Général des Imprimeries Gouvernementales, 1956. (Volume I, Part 5 of al-Shifa'.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-Jadal (Dialectic), ed. A.F. Al-Ehwany, Cairo: Organisme Général des Imprimeries Gouvernementales, 1965. (Volume I, Part 7 of al-Shifa'.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-Khatabah (Rhetoric), ed. S. Salim, Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1954. (Volume I, Part 8 of al-Shifa'.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-Ilahiyat (Theology), ed. M.Y. Moussa, S. Dunya and S. Zayed, Cairo: Organisme Général des Imprimeries Gouvernementales, 1960; ed. and trans. R.M. Savory and D.A. Agius, 'Ibn Sina on Primary Concepts in the Metaphysics of al-Shifa', in Logikos Islamikos, Toronto, Ont.: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1984; trans. G.C. Anawati, La métaphysique du Shifa', Études Musulmanes 21, 27, Paris: Vrin, 1978, 1985. (This is the metaphysics of al-Shifa', Volume I, Book 5.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) al-Nafs (The Soul), ed. G.C. Anawati and S. Zayed, Cairo: Organisme Général des Imprimeries Gouvernementales, 1975; ed. F. Rahman, Avicenna's De Anima, Being the Psychological Part of Kitab al-Shifa', London: Oxford University Press, 1959. (Volume I, part 6 of al-Shifa'.)

Ibn Sina (c.1014-20) Kitab al-najat (The Book of Salvation), trans. F. Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology: An English Translation of Kitab al-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI with Historical-philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952. (The pyschology of al-Shifa'.)

Alexander of Aphrodisias (c.200) De anima (On the Soul), in Scripta minora 2.1, ed. I. Bruns, Berlin, 1887; ed. A.P. Fontinis, The De Anima of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979. (Important later commentary on Aristotle.)

Davidson, H.A. (1992) Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of the Human Intellect, New York: Oxford University Press. (A thorough consideration of Ibn Sina's theory of the intellects in relation to Hellenistic and Arabic philosophers.)

Fakhry, M. (1993) Ethical Theories in Islam, 2nd edn, Leiden: Brill. (Contains material on Ibn Sina's ethical thought.)

Goodman, L. (1992) Avicenna, London: Routledge. (A useful introduction to central features of Ibn Sina's philosophical theories.)

Gutas, D. (1988) Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works, Leiden: Brill. (An excellent account of the considerations that entered into the construction of Ibn Sina's corpus, the book contains translations of a number of smaller texts, a careful consideration of method and sharp criticisms of, among other things, ascriptions of mysticism to Ibn Sina. This is probably the most useful guide to an engagement with the philosopher's work currently available in English.)

Inati, S. (1996) 'Ibn Sina', in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. 16, 231-46. (Comprehensive guide to his analytical thought.)

Janssens, J.L. (1991) An Annotated Bibliography on Ibn Sina (1970-1989), Including Arabic and Persian Publications and Turkish and Russian references, Leuven: University of Leuven Press. (An indispensible tool for study of Ibn Sina and recent work on the philosopher, though it will soon need to be updated.)

Kemal, S. (1991) The Poetics of Alfarabi and Avicenna, Leiden: Brill. (A philosophical study of Ibn Sina's philosophical poetics and its relation to epistemology and morality.)

Mamura, M.E. (1962) 'Some Aspects of Avicenna's Theory of God's Knowledge of Particulars', Journal of the American Oriental Society 82: 299-312. (This paper, along with those of Morewedge (1972) and Rahman (1958), are seminal to contemporary understanding of Ibn Sina's thought.)

Mamura, M.E. (1980) 'Avicenna's Proof from Contingency for God's Existence in the Metaphysics of al Shifa', Medieval Studies 42: 337-52. (A clear exposition of the proof.)

Morewedge, P. (1972) 'Philosophical Analysis and Ibn Sina's "Essence-Existence" distinction', Journal of the American Oriental Society 92: 425-35. (A welcome explanation of the implications of a distinction central to Ibn Sina's proof of God's existence.)

Nasr, S.H. (1996) 'Ibn Sina's Oriental Philosophy', in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. 17, 247-51. (Concise and interesting defence of the idea that Ibn Sina really did have distinctive system of mystical philosophy.)

Rahman, F. (1958) 'Essence and Existence in Avicenna', Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4: 1-16. (A version also appears in Hamdard Islamicus 4 (1): 3-14. The paper considers the philosophical usefulness of the distinction of essence from existence.)