AVICENNA (370-428 AH—980-1037 AD) Abd al-Rahman al Naqib

This study attempts to present the educational aspects of an Arab thinker considered byancient and modern scholars alike as the most famous of the Muslim philosophers.2 Thus al-Dhahbi describes him as ‘the leader of Islamic philosophy’.3 G.C. Anawati has prepared a fullbibliography of Avicenna’s writings.4 In 1950, to commemorate the thousandth anniversary ofhis birth, the Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya (Egyptian National Library) published a printed list ofthe titles of his works and their commentaries which are preserved there. We need only consultthis list, containing more than 150 printed works and manuscripts and including all thebranches of knowledge in his day, even poetry, to evaluate the extent of the culture whichAvicenna acquired and handed on to us.

Avicenne – Ibn Sina