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Abu 7
N6TES ON THE FOURTH DISCOURSE
Alf al-Husayn ibn |Abdu'llah ibn Sina (better known in the
West bj the Europeanized form of his name Avicenna, and commonly
,called in Persia, his native country, ash-Shavkhiifr-Ra'is, "the Ch'ief
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Doctor," or al-Mu'allimu'th-Thani, "the Second Great Teacher")
was born in August, A.D. qSo, in a village near Bukhara, where he
received his earlier education, the philosopher an-Natili and the physician
t'fsa ibn Yahya being *amongst his teachers. At the early age of ij
he achieved medical renown by his successful treatment of the Samanid ,
prince Nuh ibn Manstir (reigned A.D. 976-997). On his father's dea'th,
when he was about 21 years of age, he went to Khwarazm, the circumstances
of his departure fr&m which are described in Anecdote XXX V I.
Attracted to Tabaristan by the fame of Qabiis ibn Washmgir, he arrived
there, as he himself says 1
, only to find that;
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that talented but unfortunate
prince had been deposed and cast into prison, where he was soon afterwards
murdered (403/1012-3). Avicenna subsequently became minister
to Shamsu'd-Dawla at Hamadan, where he suffered disgrace and imprisonment,
but presently escaped to Isfahan, and entered the service of^Ala'u'd-
Dawla Abu Ja'far tytuhammad ibn Dushmanziyar of the so-called Kaka-
wayhid dynasty 2
, for whom he wrote his Persian Encyclopaedi/i of th^
Sciences called in his honour Danish-nama-i^AlaH*. He died of colic
on the march to Hamadan (where his tomb still exists) in 428/1037, at
the age of 58 lunar years, after a short illness for which he treated himself
with less than his usual success, so that it was said of him by a contem-
porary satirist 4 :
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" I saw Ibn Sfnd (Avicenna) contending with men, but he died in prison (or,
of constipation) the most ignoble death ;
" What he attained by the Shifd (or, by healing) did not secure his health,,
t nor did he escape death by his Najdt (or 'Deliverance')."
In these verses there are three ingenious word-plays, for habs means
both " imprisonment " and " constipation," while two of his most famous
works are entitled Shifd (" Healing ") and Najdt (" Deliverance ").
t Besides his medical and philosophical works, Avluenna wrote a good
deal of fine poetry in Arabic and a few quatrains (s.ome of which are
often ascribed to 'Umar-i-Khayyam) in Persian. The latter have been
collected by the late Dr Hermann Ethe 5
and of the former a consider-
,
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able number are given by Ibn Abi . Usaybi'a Of his beautiful Arabic
qasida on the descent of the soul into the body a., translation will be
found in vol. ii of my Literary History ofPersia 1 1
(pp. o-i 1 Another
1).
1
remarkable qasida ascribed to him foretells wit'n extraordinary prevision
the Mongol invasion, the sack of Baghdad, the murder of the Caliph,
1 Set the note on p. 79, 1. 23 of the text (Persian notes, pp. 250-251).
2 See S. Lane-Poole's Mohammadan Dynasties, p. 145. n
^ See Rieu's Persian Catalogue, pp. 433-434. A lithographed edition of this book
was published at Haydarabad in the Deccan in 1309/18912.
4 See Ibn Abi Usaybi'a's Tabaqdt, vol. ii, p. 6.
5 Avicenna alspersischer Lyriker in the Gottinger Nachrichten for 1875, pp. 555-567.
e 7 Vol. ii, pp. 10-18.
Ibid., pp. 16-18.
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