[Avicenna--a great physician and thinker]

AVICENNA (980-1037), whose full name was Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd-Allah ibn Sina, was the most renowned and influential medical man and philosopher of the medieval Islam. Over a three hundred of Avicenna's works have survived, ranging from encyclopedic treatments to short treatleses and covering apart from medicine, philosophy and science, religious, linguistic, and literary matters. He wrote some works in Persian, of which the Danishnama-yl 'Ala'i ("The Book of Science Dedicated to Ala's Dawla") is the most important. Most of his works, however, are in Arabic. His chief medical work is Al-Qanun fi't-tibb ("The Canon of Medicine"), a synthesis of Greek and Arabic medicine also includes his own clinical observations and views on scientific method. The most detailed philosophical work is the voluminous al-Shifa' ("The Healing"). Al-Najat ("The Deliverance") is largely a summary of al-Shifa', although there are some deviations. Al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat ("The Directives and Remarks") gives the quintessence of Avicenna's philosophy, sometimes in an aphoristic style, and concludes with an expression of his mystical esoteric views, a part that relates to certain symbolic narratives which he also wrote.