author
Avicenna
980–1037
A brilliant physician, philosopher, and scientist of the Islamic Golden Age, he wrote works that shaped both medicine and philosophy for centuries. His ideas traveled far beyond his own time, reaching readers across the Middle East and Europe.
1 Audiobook
A Compendium on the Soul
by Avicenna
About the author
Born around 980 near Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan, Avicenna—also known as Ibn Sina—became one of the best-known thinkers of the medieval world. He is remembered as a polymath: a scholar whose work ranged across medicine, philosophy, logic, and the natural sciences.
He is especially famous for The Canon of Medicine, a major medical encyclopedia that became highly influential in both the Islamic world and later in Europe. Another of his landmark works, The Book of Healing, was not a medical manual but a wide-ranging philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, showing the remarkable breadth of his learning.
Accounts of his life describe years spent traveling, studying, writing, and serving rulers as both physician and adviser. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the central figures of Islamic philosophy and as one of history’s most influential medical authors.