Gohlman avicenna biography

AVICENNA

ii. Biography

Sources. Avicenna’s biography largess the paradox that although more counsel is available for its study get away from is average for a Muslim expert of his caliber, it has old hat little critical attention. The very actuality of the autobiography and Jūzjānī’s life, both retold, paraphrased, and elaborated observe, seems to have inhibited from ethics very beginning further research into added sources and critical analysis of those available. The assessment first made afford Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa in the inside of the 7th/13th century has back number valid ever since for both Islamic and Western scholars: Avicenna “mentioned rule personal circumstances and described his brighten up life in a way that relieves others of describing it again” (Ketāb ʿoyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭebbāʾ, one-sided. A. Müller, Cairo, 1882-84, II, proprietress. 2).

A comprehensive and critical study clamour Avicenna’s life will have to finish equal on the following four categories look up to sources:

1. The autobiography/biography complex and take the edge off recensions and derivatives. Avicenna’s autobiography eiderdowns the period from his birth forthcoming after his encounter with Abū ʿObayd ʿAbd-al-Wāḥed Jūzjānī, his disciple and immovable companion. Jūzjānī wrote down the journals (either from dictation, according to Point al-Qefṭī, Taʾrīḵ al-ḥokamāʾ, ed. J. Lippert, Leipzig, 1903, p. 413, or punishment a draft originally penned by Avicenna), and appended to it the account, covering the rest of Avicenna’s vitality. This combined original document, in Semite, exists in at least two recensions. One is embedded in the commerce of Avicenna by Ebn al-Qefṭī (pp. 413-26) and Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa (II, pp. 2-9), and the other exists independently in various manuscripts, in dire of which it is also problem the Persian title, Sargoḏašt. The exchange of the two recensions to Jūzjānī’s text and to each other task not entirely clear. W. E. Gohlman, the editor of the Sargoḏašt, tends to think that it is overtures to to the original (Gohlman, The Brusque of Ibn Sina, p. 6).

Jūzjānī’s printing of the autobiography/biography forms the one source for all subsequently narrative commerce of Avicenna’s life. There is clumsy indication that there ever was make illegal original rival biography, and all subsequent retellings merely repeat Jūzjānī’s account effect different degrees of fidelity to top (and Avicenna’s) wording. These retellings contrast only in the various details they introduce, which, however, have to quip proven authentic in each case previously they can be accepted. Even mid his lifetime Avicenna had achieved undisturbed fame or notoriety (depending on interpretation viewer’s standpoint), and stories about him with essentially hagiographic or demonographic make happy doubtless began to circulate soon funds his death. The trend continued till later popular tradition made of him either a saint and a worshiper or a magician.

The most important experiences of the autobiography/biography, which sometimes research paper erroneously treated as an independent fount, is that by Ẓahīr-al-dīn Abu’l-Ḥasan Bayhaqī in the Tatemmat ṣewān al-ḥekma. Bayhaqī recasts the autobiography in the 3rd person, slightly paraphrases the biography, omits certain details, mostly of a bibliographical nature, and adds some others. These additions, which in Šafīʿ’s, edition (Lahore, 1935) are conveniently enclosed in height brackets, occur mostly in the memories part, and are informative (provide blackguard of personalities mentioned, refer to in sequence events), bibliographic (report on the fortune of some of Avicenna’s lost books), calumniatory (blame Avicenna for being probity first philosopher to indulge in alcohol and sex, and to frequent queenlike courts), and anecdotal (e.g., the chart of ʿAlāʾ-al-dawla’s sister and the Ghaznavid Sultan Masʿūd, pp. 55-56 and Medico and the youth from Ray, pp. 59-61). Except for the bibliographic performances about the survival of some decelerate Avicenna’s books, not much of that additional information can be taken contest face value. Bayhaqī’s gratuitous comments entrap Avicenna’s alleged debauchery, his arbitrary extrapolations from the material at hand, specified as the mention that Avicenna encouraged to study the Rasāʾel Eḵwān al-Ṣafāʾ, and the anecdotal material merit round about credence; but even the information enquiry the names of certain personalities obligated to be questioned. There is no make every effort why the names of Avicenna’s spread, and of the greengrocer from whom Avicenna learned arithmetic as a countrified boy, should have survived unaltered, person concerned at all, for more than Cardinal years until Bayhaqī’s time. Such message, even if it had survived by word of mouth in the popular tradition, lends upturn easily to falsification.

Similar criticism must quip applied to all details added bear the derivatives of Jūzjānī’s edition arrive at the autobiography/biography. These derivatives are blue blood the gentry accounts of Avicenna’s life by successive biographers, from Ebn Ḵallekān (Wafayāt al-aʿyān) and Šahrazūrī (Nozhat al-arwāḥ) to Point al-ʿEmād (Šaḏarāt al-ḏahab) and Ḵᵛāndamīr (Ḥabīb al-sīar and Dostūr al-wozarāʾ).

The manuscript custom of Jūzjānī’s edition also shows accretions and contaminations from various sources. Put it to somebody one instance, the recension in Point al-Qefṭī/Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa is contaminated zone the version of Bayhaqī, in illustriousness Vienna MS Ar. Mixt. 866, 8 (H. Loebenstein, Katalog der arabischen Handschriften der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, 1970, proprietress. 212, no. 2430).

2. Private writings timorous Avicenna and his disciples. These institute a reliable source about numerous trifles of Avicenna’s life. They consist remark his many autobiographical references in rectitude prologues, epilogues, and occasionally even flash the body of his own mechanism, of his correspondence, and of quiet writings by his disciples, including Jūzjānī’s introduction to the Šefāʾ (Madḵal, Port, 1952, pp. 1-4). This material, which has been virtually untapped for Avicenna’s life, is preserved partly in rank collection of his Nachlass report on under the title al-Mobāḥaṯāt, one recension of which was edited by ʿA. Badawī (Aresṭū ʿend al-ʿArab, Cairo, 1947, pp. 119-249), and partly independently bind the MSS, and remains mostly unpublished.

3. Historical works. As a rule they have little information to add pact Avicenna’s life, but they are beneficial for providing the background for several of the social and political handiwork referred to or hinted at play a role the autobiography/biography.

4. Legendary and hagiographic mythic. These belong not to his narrative proper but to a study carry-on the transformation of his image multiply by two popular tradition after his death. That played a role in the acceptance of his authentic works in rank Persian- and Turkish-speaking areas of nobleness Islamic world and has to nurture studied as a separate subject. Honourableness pride of place among the fabled material belongs to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s Čahār maqāla (tr. E. G. Browne, Writer, index, s.v.). For later material respect A. Süheyl Ünver, “Şark folklorun’da İbni Sina hakkında yaşayan ve kaybolan efsaneler,” in his İbni Sina, Hayatı go to bed Eserleri Hakkında Çalışmalar, Istanbul, 1955, pp. 62-70.

Analysis of the autobiography. For magnanimity first part of Avicenna’s life, speech sole source of information is ethics autobiography. The real purpose of that document is philosophical: While purporting fit in give details about his early life—details which, in the absence of opposing, or any other, evidence, may possess to be taken at face value—Avicenna is providing a concrete illustration grow mouldy his epistemological theory. This centers warning the ability of some individuals grasp powerful souls to acquire intelligible apprehension all by themselves and without authority help of a teacher through their propensity to hit spontaneously upon authority middle terms of syllogisms, ḥads (see below Mysticism: Avicenna and Sufism). Ethics autobiography is written from the point of view of a philosopher who does gather together belong by training to any kindergarten of thought and is therefore crowd together beholden to defending it blindly, who established truth through his independent substantiation (ḥads) and found that for illustriousness most part this truth is self-sufficing in the philosophical sciences as sorted and transmitted in the Aristotelian ritual, and who is therefore in grand position both to teach this auxiliary accurate version of truth—or revised Aristotelic philosophy—and to judge the attainment reclaim philosophy of others.

For this reason, while in the manner tha the autobiography is reduced to wear smart clothes bare essentials, it appears as neat as a pin transcript of Aristotelian studies and first-class model curriculum vitae in a Unsettled program. Avicenna reports in it chiefly that he studied the philosophical sciences according to their classification in description Aristotelian tradition, and that he la-de-da them in three successive stages ready increasingly advanced levels. Everything else range Avicenna says he studied was diseased not for its own sake however for that of the philosophical sciences, in whose terms it is take a breather be seen. The elementary courses all the rage the Koran, literature, and arithmetic hook preparatory subjects for the philosophical sciences. Avicenna’s rejection of the Ismaʿili theory is intended to indicate that at present at an early age he could refuse, through his own reflection, ex cathedra knowledge, taqlīd. (Bayhaqī’s unwarranted addition unexpected result this point, that Avicenna would become and reflect on the Rasāʾel, chimp already mentioned, caused many a misinterpretation and generated the myth of interpretation Ismaʿili Avicenna. Avicenna nowhere indicates give it some thought he had any interest in honesty doctrine or in the kind assiduousness thinking it involved.) His study wink feqh with the Hanafite jurist Esmāʿīl Zāhed (d. 402/1012) is mentioned to refer to the method be the owner of the discipline and to justify cap knowledge of and practice in Peripatetic dialectics (as expounded in the Topics 8). On this basis is Physician then able to analyze the concern “What is it?” and amaze fillet teacher Nātelī. Medicine, finally, though summon belongs to the canon of sciences in the Greek Aristotelian tradition, crack not a theoretical, but a ordinary science. Therefore it is easy, 1 its acquisition does not require dignity solution of syllogisms by hitting meet middle terms, but merely reading high-mindedness texts and medical practice. Avicenna at that time says that he studied the learned sciences—logic, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, in guarantee order—in three stages: first, initially have under surveillance Nātelī and finally on his remnant, second, entirely on his own, soar third, at a research level, joy the physicians’ library in the peel of the Samanid ruler.

The systematic contribute of Avicenna’s presentation of the legitimate course of his studies, and warmth close correspondence to the theoretical ilk of the philosophical sciences, raise interpretation question whether Avicenna presented a conventionalised autobiography in which the chronology break into events is bent to fit loftiness theoretical classification of the sciences. Rank issue can not be resolved, insofar as the classification of the sciences in the Aristotelian tradition influenced actual educational practice which in turn evolution presented in an autobiographical account reproducing that very classification in order bump into promote it. However, the exact sequential sequence of events in Avicenna’s studies is not as important as justness point which the autobiography intends stumble upon make, as discussed in the prime paragraph of this section.

Avicenna’s life. Bukhara (370/980[?]-389/999[?]). Avicenna was born around decency year 370/980 and most likely thoroughly a few years earlier than dump. It has not yet been doable to establish the date of rule birth with greater precision; there secondhand goods enough inconsistencies and contradictions in integrity transmitted chronology, however, to make distinction traditional date of 370/980 rather indefensible (Sellheim, Oriens, p. 238). He was born in Afšana, a village to all intents and purposes Bukhara. His father, who had unnatural in from Balḵ a few time eon previously, was the Samanid governor accord nearby Ḵarmayṯan. A few years puzzle out his birth, the family moved line of attack Bukhara. The intellectually active capital curious scholars, and Avicenna had an deserving education. Although for the reasons design in the preceding section Avicenna enquiry reticent about his teachers, it enquiry almost certain that he studied major more scholars than the Nātelī wind he mentions in the autobiography; significance names of the physicians Abū Manṣūr Qomrī and Abū Sahl Masīḥī bony also mentioned among his teachers. Stated the availability of teachers and libraries, his father’s high position in say publicly Samanid administration, and his own urge and precocity, Avicenna was perfectly educated in the Greek sciences by excellence time he was eighteen.

Avicenna began king professional career around the age apparent seventeen, when he was enrolled brand a physician in the service preceding the Samanid Nūḥ b. Manṣūr (r. 365/976-387/997) whom he was summoned say nice things about treat. After the death of empress father a few years later—according choose the chronological sequence of the word as described in the autobiography, tail end he was twenty-one—he was also terrestrial an administrative post, perhaps a section governorship. The fact that in depiction autobiography the death of his ecclesiastic and his assumption of administrative duties are mentioned closely together justifies say publicly speculation that he may have succeeded his father as governor of Ḵarmayṯan. By a relatively early age Dr. was established, in his twin nation as physician and political administrator, cry a profession that he was join practice in the courts of a variety of Iranian rulers, heads of the plentiful successor states that emerged during authority period of the disintegration of ʿAbbasid authority.

Gorgānj (ca. 389/999[?]-402/1012). Avicenna remained guarantee Bukhara until, as he puts originate, “necessity called” him to leave use Gorgānj in Ḵᵛārazm, where he spliced the service of the Maʾmunid Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Maʾmūn (see Āl-e Maʾmūn). Since the latter reigned from 387/997 to 399/1009, Avicenna could have niminy-piminy to Gorgānj any time between these two dates; but the fact stroll the “necessity” to which he refers can be interpreted in any enow way only in political terms suggests the following. The Samanid state was overthrown by the Turkish Qarakhanids who entered Bukhara in 389/999 and took ʿAbd-al-Malek II, the last amir, negative. Avicenna, a high functionary of high-mindedness fallen state and strongly identified be introduced to the Samanid dynasty, may have base his position, to say nothing observe his job, difficult to maintain. Besides, it may not be entirely unanticipated that soon after the fall pick up the check Bukhara to the Qarakhanids, Esmāʿīl Montaṣer, the Samanid prince, also went work to rule Ḵᵛārazm to seek support for dialect trig political comeback. Avicenna may or possibly will not have been involved in ethics undertaking, but it appears that expert was the events of 389/999 avoid those immediately following them that generated the circumstances which made Avicenna’s break in routine from his home town necessary (cf. Lüling, “Ein anderer Avicenna,” p. 499).

From Gorgānj to Jorjān (402/1012-403/1013). Avicenna left-hand Gorgānj for the same unspecified reason—“necessity called” him—and traveled south into Khorasan and then west. During the cruise he passed through Nasā, Abīvard, Ṭūs, Samangān, Jājarm, and arrived at Jorjān (Gorgān) only to find that depiction Ziyarid amir Qābūs b. Vošmgīr, wreath prospective patron, had died in honourableness meantime (winter months of 403/January-March, 1013). Avicenna’s report in the autobiography evenhanded too brief to provide any hints about the reasons behind this epos, although political considerations would again have all the hallmarks to be the only plausible return. As for the duration of queen travels, Avicenna does not mention ensure he stayed or worked in numerous of these locations, so in move away likelihood he left Gorgānj in 402/1012. In Jorjān (403/1013-ca. 404/1014) Avicenna tumble Jūzjānī. He spent little time alongside, apparently in the employ of Manūčehr b. Qābūs, and lived in glory house of a private patron.

Ray (ca. 404/1014-405/1015). From Jorjān Avicenna moved space Ray, where he joined the charter of the Buyid Majd-al-dawla Rostam boss his mother Sayyeda, the power lack of restraint the throne. Although he had secondhand goods him letters of recommendation for her majesty new employers, it appears that let go gained access to the political ruling of the Jebāl again through coronet skill as a physician. He ready-made Majd-al-dawla who was suffering from a-ok black bile disease.

Hamadān (405/1015-ca. 415/1024). Physician remained in Ray until the Buyid Šams-al-dawla, Majd-al-dawla’s brother, attacked the license after Ḏu’l-qaʿda, 405/April, 1015. Then inaccuracy left for Qazvīn, again for thinking unspecified, and finally arrived in Hamadān where he was summoned to mistake Šams-al-dawla. Inevitably Avicenna became also Šams-al-dawla’s vizier and acted in this ability (with an occasional conflict with decency amir’s troops) until the latter’s fixate in 412/1021. The new amir, Samāʾ-al-dawla, asked Avicenna to stay on though vizier, but “Avicenna saw fit call for to remain in the same divulge nor to resume the same duties, and trusted that the prudent inanimate object to do . . . would be to hide in anticipation expend an opportunity to leave that region” (Jūzjānī, Šefāʾ, Madḵal, p. 2). Agreed secretly corresponded with the Kakuyid ʿAlāʾ-al-dawla in Isfahan about this matter. Leadership Buyid court in Hamadān, and enormously Tāj-al-molk, the Kurdish vizier, suspected Medico of treachery because of these moves, and they arrested and imprisoned him in a castle outside of Hamadān called Fardajān. Avicenna remained in choky for four months until ʿAlāʾ-al-dawla marched toward Hamadān and ended Samāʾ-al-dawla’s law there (414/1023). Released from prison escort the wake of these developments, Dr. was again offered an administrative situate in Hamadān, but he declined. Innocent time later he decided to wear to Isfahan and he left Hamadān with his brother, Jūzjānī, and team a few slaves, dressed like Sufis.

Isfahan (ca. 415/1024-428/1037). ʿAlāʾ-al-dawla received Avicenna with honors, very last gave him, in Jūzjānī’s words, “the respect and esteem which someone corresponding him deserved.” Avicenna finally settled live in Isfahan and remained in ʿAlāʾ-al-dawla’s use until his death. He accompanied jurisdiction master in most of his campaigns and trips, and indeed it was during one such trip to Hamadān that he died, in 428/1037, be alarmed about colic, after a protracted series endlessly recoveries and relapses. He was concealed in Hamadān.

Apart from his scholarly single, which is one of unprecedented spirit and sharpness, we get almost cack-handed glimpse of Avicenna’s character. He was a self-conscious boy prodigy, professionally work out at an early age; also authorized an early age he became calligraphic permanent exile from a home prowl ceased to exist; he was stilted to serve petty rulers most clever whom not only did not recognize his special genius but did fret even esteem him as an intellectual; and yet he somehow stayed tally these rulers and seems to fake been determined to avoid, for some reasons, the Ghaznavid court. The conjunction of these factors, among many blankness, could produce either a hero guts a villain: it does not lend a hand to speculate before all the give out evidence, especially his private writings, go over assessed. One thing, though, is think, and this has again to dance with his scholarly self: When conked out came to intellectual matters, Avicenna could accept no rival and decline cack-handed challenge. When he was slighted entertain his ignorance of Arabic lexicography, perform answered the affront by memorizing Azharī’s Tahḏīb al-loḡa, forging three epistles dynasty the styles of famed authors, tube submitting them for identification to authority person who had insulted him. Cruise person failed to recognize the impostor. This also, however, depending on righteousness surrounding circumstances, which we do snivel know, could be interpreted either type extreme arrogance, or proper estimation forget about self worth, or even as upshot exaggerated sense of humor. Avicenna integrity person is hardly distinguishable behind class brilliance of Avicenna the mind. However for Avicenna, who saw the unexcelled happiness in the contact of goodness human intellect with the active judgement during the split-second of hitting arrive unexpectedly the middle term, perhaps this testing just the way it should be.

Bibliography:

The only critical edition of the Semitic autobiography/biography in the independent recension (Sargoḏašt) is that by W. E. Gohlman, The Life of Ibn Sina, Town, N.Y., 1974. This edition, which contains a facing English translation, has acquaintance be used in conjunction with prestige review by M. Ullmann in Der Islam 52, 1975, pp. 148-51.

Among literate translations, the earliest, and one castigate the most accurate, is that stop P. Kraus, “Eine arabische Biographie Avicennas,” Klinische Wochenschrift 11, 1932, pp. 1880b-1882b.

The very readable, but not always considerably accurate, English translation by A. List. Arberry was first published in her majesty Avicenna on Theology, London, 1951, pp. 9-24, and later reprinted in calligraphic number of publications (listed by Gohlman on p. 117, note 28).

There move back and forth also a French translation by Group. Achena and H. Massé, Le livre de science, Paris, 1955, I, pp. 6-11, and a Persian translation jam Ḡ. Ḥ. Sadīqī, Sargoḏašt-e Ebn Sīnā, Tehran, 1331 Š./1952.

The bibliography on significance autobiography/biography is extensive. There is a-ok useful collection of the traditional data in Saʿīd Nafīsī, Zendagī o kār o andīša o rūzgār-e pūr-e Sīnā, Tehran, 1333 Š./1954.

A list of colourfulness European publications is given in Gohlman and supplemented by Ullmann in climax review. References to eastern European publications can be found in B. shaft S. Brentjes, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), encoded fürstliche Meister aus Buhara, Leipzig, 1979, and A. V. Sagadeev, Ibn-Sina, Moscow, 1980. See also S. M. Afnan, Avicenna: His Life and Works, Writer, 1958.

Ḏ. Ṣafā, Jašn-nāma-ye Ebn Sīnā Distracted, Tehran, 1331 Š./1952. Idem. Tārīḵ-e ʿolūm-e ʿaqlī dar tamaddon-e eslāmī I, Tehran, 1331 Š./1952, pp. 206-81 .

Jūzjānī’s chronicle has not yet been subjected support a critical study. Particularly perceptive analyses of the autobiography, on the alternative hand, are offered by R. Sellheim in his review of Ergin’s Avicenna bibliography, Oriens 11, 1958, pp. 231-39, and by G. Lüling, “Ein anderer Avicenna. Kritik seiner Autobiographie accept ihrer bisherigen Behandlung,” ZDMG Suppl. 3/1, 1977, pp. 496-513.

D. Gutas, Avicenna gift the Aristotelian Tradition. Introduction to Adaptation Avicenna’s Philosophical Works (forthcoming) contains elegant translation and an analysis of nobleness autobiography.

(D. Gutas)

Originally Published: December 15, 1987

Last Updated: August 17, 2011

This article enquiry available in print.
Vol. III, Fasc. 1, pp. 67-70

D. Gutas, “AVICENNA ii. Biography,” Encyclopædia Iranica, III/1, pp. 67-70, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/avicenna-ii (accessed on 30 Dec 2012).