AVICENNA, known in the Muslim world as Ibn Sina (born in 980), a Persian-Tajik philosopher and physician, is one of the most extraordinary figures in the entire history of civilization. A philosopher with encyclopedic knowledge, a scholar and experimenter, an eminent theoretician of Medicine, a clinician and practitioner, a poet and musician, he is the author of an immense body of work that deals with almost all areas of knowledge of his time. By his prodigious precocity, from a young age (ten to twelve years), he aroused the admiration of those around him; and later, at the age of eighteen, he proved his mastery in all the sciences of his time. The essential foundation of his biography is a small book written by his most faithful disciple, Gawzgani, who carefully collected the manuscripts of the master's great works. In the first part of his biography, he himself recounts his youth:
"My father was from Balkh (now Afghanistan-Southern Tajikistan) during the reign of Nuh ibn Mansur the Samanid. He went from Balkh to Bokhara (now Uzbekistan); he worked there in the administration, became prefect of Kharmaithan (province of Bukhara) ... Near Kharmaithan is a district called Afchaneh. He married my mother, Setareh, and settled there. We were born there, me, then my brother. Later we all went to Bukhara. I began the study of the Koran and literature. By the age of ten, I had mastered the Koran and a large part of literature, so much so that people were surprised.
My father was one of those who had responded favorably to the teaching provided by the Egyptians (the Fatimids); he was among the followers of Ismailism; he had accepted their opinions on the soul and on reason. My brother had done the same. Often, they discussed it; I listened to them, I understood what they said, and they undertook to attract me to their rite. Sometimes, too, they began to talk about philosophy, geometry and Indian calculation. Then, my father decided to send me to a vegetable merchant who knew this calculation, ......In the meantime, Nâtéli, who called himself a philosopher, came to Bukhara. My father put him up in the hope that he would teach me something. ... Before his arrival, I had familiarized myself with various methods of questioning and objection addressed to the interlocutor. ...Then, under the direction of Nâtéli, I undertook the reading of Porphyry...Nâtéli left me... I applied myself to reading and studying the natural sciences and metaphysics; and day by day, the doors of science opened before me. Then I devoted myself to Medicine and began to read the works on this science; as Medicine is not one of the difficult sciences, I promptly showed my superiority, so much so that eminent physicians studied it under my direction.
Moreover, I gave my care to the sick; thus the doors of treatment based on experience opened before me, in an indescribable manner. At the same time, I supported discussions and controversies of jurisprudence. At that time, I was sixteen years old. For a year and a half, I devoted myself more and more to study. I returned to that of logic and all the parts of philosophy. During all this time, I did not sleep a single whole night and, all day, I occupied myself with nothing other than the acquisition of sciences. I acquired great knowledge. ..... Whenever I found myself in difficulty before a problem or that I was unable to establish the middle term of a syllogism, I went to the mosque, I prayed to the absolute founder of the universe to reveal to me what was closed to me and to facilitate for me what was difficult. At that time, Prince Samanides was afflicted with a serious illness that the doctors could not cure... I presented myself and joined the other doctors to treat him; and I distinguished myself in his service ......... In my neighborhood lived a man... he asked me to compose for him a scientific encyclopedia....... I treated (Compendium) of all the sciences except mathematics; I was then twenty-one years old. I had another neighbor, he was without equal in jurisprudence .... I composed for him my book entitled "the sum and the product" nearly twenty fascicles, and for him also, I wrote on morality a book entitled "piety and sin". ..... In the meantime, my father died: my situation was upset and I had to enter the service of the prince. Forced by necessity, I left Bukhara...... »
Threatened by the powerful Sultan Mahmud (1001), AVICENNA left for Khârezm (south of Orale, currently in Uzbekistan) then to Khorasan (east of Iran), Gorgān (north of Iran), Ray (southwest of Tehran, Iran) and finally to Hamadān (west of Iran). In Gorgān he began one of his masterpieces "the Canon of Medicine". In 1014, he left Ray and settled near Hamadān. Preceded by his fame, AVICENNA was called to the bedside of Prince Shamsodawleh; The Emir chose him as Vazir (prime minister) and there he began another masterpiece, Al Shifa "the book of healing the soul", a true encyclopedia of philosophy. In 1021, his protector, the prince died and his son refused to reappoint AVICENNA as grand Vazir. The latter hid with a friend and during this period he practically completed al Shifa. A secret letter addressed to the prince of Isfahan was intercepted and revealed the place where AVICENNA was hiding, who was immediately arrested and thrown into prison with his disciple Gawzgani. During the four months he spent in prison, he wrote the story (the guided) and the remedy for heart diseases. At the end of a war between the prince of Isfahan and the prince of Hamadān, AVICENNA was released, but found himself forced to live in Hamadān. In 1023 he fled to Isfahan where he spent the last fourteen years of his life under the protection of the prince of Isfahan Alaadowleh. In Isfahan he studied astronomy and wrote, at the request of the prince, the book of science (Daneshnameh). He added a chapter on music to al Shifa.... He died in Hamadān in August 1037 at the age of 57.
AVICENNA Physician:
AVICENNA is the author of the Canon of Medicine, an encyclopedic treatise of a million words that served as a major reference work for six centuries. He is considered one of the greatest physicians of all time, earning him the title of "Prince of Medicines." The influence of the Canon was immense, translated into Latin a century later. Its popularity was so great that it was published sixteen times in the last thirty years of the 15th century and more than twenty times in the 16th century. It was still printed and read in the second half of the 17th century, and was regularly consulted by treating physicians. Until around 1650, it served as a textbook in the universities of Montpellier and Louvain. In Vienna and Frankfurt, the curriculum for medical studies in the 16th century was based largely on the Canon. A course on Avicenna's medicine continued to be taught at the University of Brussels until 1909. One of AVICENNA's great contributions to medicine concerns etiology. He believes that one can only know a thing completely if one takes into account the matter from which it is made, the "efficient cause" that gives it its form, the "formal cause" that determines its form and quality, and the "final box" or function for which it was created. For AVICENNA, the soul is that which, in accordance with the nature of the organism, acts as the ultimate determinant or active agent that governs its growth and activity. His fundamental thesis is therefore this: "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, man is a dynamic organism and each individual has a particular and unique temperament. His dynamism cannot be explained by analysis." From this concept, AVICENNA develops a theory according to which the disease must be explained according to the genetic structure of each individual, his temperament, his constitution, the power of his faculties, the influence of the environment, and the very effort of nature to restore or maintain his vital functions. The canon abounds in original observations made by AVICENNA during his medical practice. The part devoted to the pharmacopoeia describes some 760 medicines. AVICENNA outlines some methods of pharmacology. In this same part, we find a passage on experimentation which is established by the three methods, concordance, difference and concomitant variations, which are usually used in modern science.
AVICENNA philosopher:
The two books written by AVICENNA, Al Shifa (the book of healing the soul), and the book of science, place AVICENNA in the first rank of the great thinkers. In philosophy, his thought embraces all branches of Aristotelianism: logic, economics and politics, philosophy and religion and finally mysticism. In his works, he also approached all scientific fields, such as medicine, mathematics, astronomy, alchemy and astrology, geology and geography, mineralogy, herbalism, zoology, natural sciences. There is practically no scientific subject that he has not treated without subsequently arousing the interest of scientists. Philosophy, specified the object of his great work "Our intention is to put there the fruit of the sciences of the ancients that we have verified; sciences based on a firm deduction or an induction accepted by thinkers who have long sought the truth. I have tried to contain the greater part of philosophy ". Al Shifa is therefore presented as an encyclopedia grouping all the rational sciences, thus preceding our modern encyclopedias by six centuries. In Al Shifa, AVICENNA introduces research and personal hypotheses of great magnitude. The influence of AVICENNA in the West was so great that a movement was born and bore his name "Avicennise", which occupied a central place in the history of European thought. It was through him that the ideas and doctrines of the great thinkers of Greco-Latin antiquity (ARISTOTLE, PLATON, PLOTINUS, etc. .....) were transmitted to the thinkers of the medieval West at the same time as the original contribution of AVICENNA. Here are some of the European heirs: the Englishman Roger BACON (d.1294), the Scottish man John DUNS SCOT (one of the founders of scholastic philosophy, d. 1308), the German Saint ALBERTE the Great (d. 1280), the Italian Saint Thomas AQUINAS (the great theologian, d. 1225), the Englishman Geoffrey CHAUCER (d. 1400), etc...
The fame of AVICENNA's philosophy and medicine is so great that it tends to overshadow his contribution to the development of the natural sciences. And yet AVICENNA made intense efforts, both in physics and astronomy, as well as in mathematics and mineralogy, formulating a large number of original ideas that profoundly influenced the natural sciences of his time, and which remain current today. This is the case, for example, in the study of motion and the measurement of motion, an essential area of physics, the distinction between the speed of light and that of sound. AVICENNA was the first to enunciate concepts such as "quantity of motion", "motive force" and "impulse" which entered into Western European mechanics in the 17th and 18th centuries. He is therefore at the head of a line of scholars: DESCARTES, HUYGHENS, LEIBNIZ, ALEMBERT, THOMSON, KIRKHOFF and others who have studied the problem of measuring movement at length. No one before DESCARTES had done so on a truly scientific basis. For modern science, AVICENNA's research on the problem of the space-time unit has lost none of its relevance. "Motion has two measurable quantities apart from its own: one is the length of its path.... the other the quantity.... are called time". AVICENNA's ideas on the origin of man were the most advanced of his time. Thus he asserts that the origin of man must be sought in an animal species. If AVICENNA was so often the first, it is because he devoted his entire life and activity, whether in the field of medicine or philosophy, poetry or literature, to the sole aim of making men better and happier. This is where he saw the purpose of philosophy. Judging it essential that there be "established standards of equity and law between men".
Mizhgona Sharofova – Tajikistan, Dushanbe
Head of the Laboratory of Pharmaceutics and Experimental medicine CRIT NAST, Chief Researcher, Doctor of Medical Sciences
Massoud Mirshahi – France, Paris
Professor, Ph.D., М.D., Academician NAST
For more information:
• The UNESCO Courier, October 1980
• The Book of Science (Daneshnameh), AVICENNE, Translated by M. Achena and H. Massé, UNESCO collection, Publishing Company "Les belles lettres" Paris, 1986
• Al Shifa (the book of healing the soul), AVICENNE, (vol. I and II) Translated by: G.C. ANAWATI, Ed. Librairie Philosophique J. Varin, Paris, 1978.
• AVICENNE and the visionary story, Henry Corbin, Ed. Berg International, Paris, 1979.
• Абуали ибни Сино. Алвохия. Избранные произведения, Т.2, Душанбе: Ирфон, 1980. – С. 317-395 (на таджикском языке).
• Абу Али ибн Сина. Сочинения Т. пятый «аш-Шифа» - "Исцеление". Душанбе: Дониш, 2010 - С. 41-700.
•Абу Али ибн Сина (Авиценна). Сочинения. Том первый. «Донишнаме» (Книга Знания). Душанбе: Дониш, 2005 - С. 221-577.
• Абу Али ибн Сина. Книга спасения. Сочинения, том III. Душанбе: Дониш, 2010. – С. 30-600.
• Абу Али ибн Сина. Сочинения. Том четвёртый. Философские, естественно научные и медицинские трактаты. Душанбе: Дониш, 2008. – 1002 С.
•Нуралиев Ю.Н. Медицина эпохи Саманидов. Душанбе: Деваштич, - 2003. – 197 С.
• Нуралиев Ю.Н. Медицинская система Ибн Сины (Авиценны). Душанбе, РТ: Дониш; 2005. - 300 С.
ОЛИМОНИ АКАДЕМИЯИ ИЛМҲО ВАЗИФАДОРАНД, КИ ДАР ИҶРОИ СЕ ҲАДАФИ СТРАТЕГИИ ДАВЛАТ – ТАЪМИНИ ИСТИҚЛОЛИЯТИ ЭНЕРГЕТИКӢ, РАҲОӢ АЗ БУНБАСТИ КОММУНИКАТСИОНӢ ВА ҲИФЗИ АМНИЯТИ ОЗУҚАВОРИИ МАМЛАКАТ НАҚШИ ФАЪОЛОНА ДОШТА БОШАНД.
