The Islamic world’s contribution to the sciences is great, especially during the European Middle Ages when much western classical knowledge had been lost or forgotten. Unfortunately, I do not know too much about Muslim scientists and mathematicians, but I thought I would write this brief post on Avicenna, whose prominence is attested by the fact that his name is recognizable to us, even if we do not know who he is. Avicenna’s life is not only a reminder of the significance of scientists from the Middle East in the history of western science but also a portrait of the Persian world in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
Abdulla ibn Sina was born in 980 near Bukhara, now Uzbekistan, which was at that time the capital of the Samanid empire (see my post of 6.12). It is said that Avicenna had memorized the Koran by age 7 and learned mathematics from an Indian living in Bukhara. (Unfortunately, there are no specific Avicenna-related sites within the city of Bukhara, the city having been destroyed by the Mongols in the intervening years.)
Learning the art and science of medicine, Avicenna became a royal physician, using the royal library in Bukhara to advance his knowledge, until the Samanid empire came to an end in the beginning of the eleventh century. Avicenna wandered westward seeking the patronage of various ministers and royalty, through the extent of the eastern Persian world from Bukhara to Urgench (in now Uzbekistan) to Merv (now Turkmenistan) to Nishapur to Gorgan (both now eastern Iran). For a while he was settled in the city of Rey, near modern Tehran, and the town of Qazvin nearby, until finally he became a royal physician in the city of Hamadan. In 1037 he died in Hamadan, where a modern tomb was erected for him in 2000.
During his lifetime Avicenna wrote literally hundreds of works on numerous subjects, but his most famous legacy is The Canon of Medicine, which compiled not only the fruits of his own experimentation but the knowledge of everyone from classical Greek to Indian scientists coming before him. The Canon of Medicine was used as a medical textbook in Europe into the 18th century, and Avicenna is considered a father of modern medicine, laying out the principles of the experimental method in clinical trials.
Other scientists of Persian cultural extraction who were from now Uzbekistan include al-Beruni, a 10th-11th century scientist who calculated the size of the earth and its distance to the sun and moon with startling accuracy, and al-Khorezmi, an 8th-9th century mathematician whose name survives in the word “algorithm” and from the title of whose book the word “algebra” is derived.
Al-Khorezmi statue, Khiva
Monument to al-Beruni, Urgench
