Avicenna's manuscript sold for more than £ 550 thousand
Regional, History, 4/26/1999

A manuscript by famous Arab physician and philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) has been sold last week at the London's Sotheby's auction house for &Oelig; 551,500 (about 8.8 million dirhams).

The manuscript in Arabic is the fifth and last volume of "Qannon fi Tibb" (The Canon of Medicine") which is Avicenna's most famous medical work. It is a definitive encyclopedia of Greek and Roman medical achievements.

Avicenna, or Ibn Sina was very influential to both the Islamic world and the Latin middle ages. He was born in a village near Bukhara in Turkistan in 980 AD and died in Ispahan in 1037. At the age of 18 he could consider himself an accomplished physician and had acquired immense philosophical knowledge as displayed in his large philosophical encyclopedias and in his numerous small treatises.

The Avicenna "The Canon of Medicine" work was compiled partly on the basis of the achievements of Greek physicians of the Roman imperial age and on other Arabic works, and, to a lesser extent, on his own experience (his own clinical notes were lost during his journeys).

The importance of this work is evident not only because of its influence in the Islamic world, which was already quite advanced at this time, but also in Europe as this work has been studied in European universities for centuries.

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