165-600: Ibn Sina ( Persian : ابن سینا , romanized : Ibn Sīnā ; c. 980 – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( / ˌ æ v ɪ ˈ s ɛ n ə , ˌ ɑː v ɪ -/ ), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world , flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age , serving in the courts of various Iranian rulers. He is often described as the father of early modern medicine. His philosophy
330-514: A deductive science without inferring them from some more basic premises?" He explained that the ideal situation is when one grasps that a "relation holds between the terms, which would allow for absolute, universal certainty". Avicenna then added two further methods for arriving at the first principles : the ancient Aristotelian method of induction ( istiqra ), and the method of examination and experimentation ( tajriba ). Avicenna criticized Aristotelian induction, arguing that "it does not lead to
495-412: A hydrostatic balance to determine the density and purity of metals and precious stones. He classified gems by what he considered their primary physical properties, such as specific gravity and hardness , rather than the common practice of the time of classifying them by colour. Biruni's main essay on political history, Kitāb al-musāmara fī aḵbār Ḵᵛārazm (" Book of nightly conversation concerning
660-573: A "Latin Avicennism" as flourishing for some time paralleling the more influential Latin Averroism , but it was suppressed by the Parisian decrees of 1210 and 1215 . Avicenna's psychology and theory of knowledge influenced the theologian William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus , while his metaphysics influenced the thought of Thomas Aquinas . Early Islamic philosophy and Islamic metaphysics , imbued as it
825-638: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to
990-467: A cubit is not clear; with an 18-inch cubit his estimate would be 3,600 miles, whereas with a 22-inch cubit his estimate would be 4,200 miles. One significant problem with this approach is that Al-Biruni was not aware of atmospheric refraction and made no allowance for it. He used a dip angle of 34 arc minutes in his calculations, but refraction can typically alter the measured dip angle by about 1/6, making his calculation only accurate to within about 20% of
1155-792: A cultural vacuum. He was sympathetic to the Afrighids , who were overthrown by the rival dynasty of Ma'munids in 995. He left his homeland for Bukhara , then under the Samanid ruler Mansur II the son of Nuh II . There he corresponded with Avicenna , and there are extant exchanges of views between these two scholars. In 998, he went to the court of the Ziyarid amir of Tabaristan , Qabus ( r. 977–981, 997–1012 ). There he wrote his first important work, al-Athar al-Baqqiya 'an al-Qorun al-Khaliyya ("The remaining traces of past centuries", translated as "Chronology of ancient nations" or "Vestiges of
1320-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in
1485-597: A given group of people, learnt their language and studied their primary texts, presenting his findings with objectivity and neutrality using cross-cultural comparisons. Akhbar S. Ahmed concluded that Al-Biruni can be considered as the first anthropologist, others, however, have argued that he can hardly be considered an anthropologist in the conventional sense. Biruni's fame as an Indologist rests primarily on two texts. Biruni wrote an encyclopedic work on India called Taḥqīq mā li-l-Hind min maqūlah maqbūlah fī al-ʿaql aw mardhūlah (variously translated as Verifying All That
1650-500: A language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi , which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian
1815-417: A literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from
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#17328489460001980-573: A native of the city of Balkh in Bactria . An official of the Samanid bureaucracy, he had served as the governor of a village of the royal estate of Harmaytan near Bukhara during the reign of Nuh II ( r. 976–997 ). Avicenna also had a younger brother. A few years later, the family settled in Bukhara, a center of learning, which attracted many scholars. It was there that Avicenna was educated, which early on
2145-529: A period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and
2310-468: A public debate, as was customary for newly arrived scholars in western Iran at that time. The purpose of the debate was to examine one's reputation against a prominent resident. The person whom Avicenna debated against was Abu'l-Qasim al-Kirmani, a member of the school of philosophers of Baghdad . The debate became heated, resulting in ibn Sina accusing Abu'l-Qasim of lack of basic knowledge in logic , while Abu'l-Qasim accused ibn Sina of impoliteness. After
2475-467: A refutation of astrology, in contradistinction to the legitimate science of astronomy, for which he expresses wholehearted support. Some suggest that his reasons for refuting astrology relate to the methods used by astrologers being based upon pseudoscience rather than empiricism and also to a conflict between the views of the astrologers and those of the orthodox theologians of Sunni Islam . He wrote an extensive commentary on Indian astronomy in
2640-416: A rich cultural context. He expressed his objectives with simple eloquence: He also translated the yoga sutras of Indian sage Patanjali with the title Tarjamat ketāb Bātanjalī fi’l-ḵalāṣ men al-ertebāk : I shall not produce the arguments of our antagonists in order to refute such of them, as I believe to be in the wrong. My book is nothing but a simple historic record of facts. I shall place before
2805-555: A scientific but also a religious dimension: in Islam worship and prayer require a knowledge of the precise directions of sacred locations, which can be determined accurately only through the use of astronomical data. In carrying out his research, al-Biruni used a variety of different techniques dependent upon the particular field of study involved. His major work on astrology is primarily an astronomical and mathematical text; he states: "I have begun with Geometry and proceeded to Arithmetic and
2970-484: A situation that prevents all sensory data input. The thought experiment told its readers to imagine themselves created all at once while suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations , which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argued that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness . Because it is conceivable that a person, suspended in air while cut off from sense experience , would still be capable of determining his own existence,
3135-580: A speaker of Persian. Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages , which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision . The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are
3300-485: A system to interpret later political events and scientific advances; those (such as al-Razi ) who considered Avicenna's theological works in isolation from his wider philosophical concerns; and those (such as al-Ghazali ) who selectively used parts of his philosophy to support their own attempts to gain greater spiritual insights through a variety of mystical means. It was the theological interpretation championed by those such as al-Razi which eventually came to predominate in
3465-409: A vast array of topics of Indian culture, including descriptions of their traditions and customs. Although he tried to stay away from political and military history, Biruni did indeed record important dates and noted actual sites of where significant battles occurred. Additionally, he chronicled stories of Indian rulers and told of how they ruled over their people with their beneficial actions and acted in
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#17328489460003630-644: Is a continuation of Middle Persian , an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars ( Persia ) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia . Old Persian
3795-610: Is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of
3960-812: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian
4125-606: Is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic -derived scripts ( Pahlavi and Manichaean ) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature ). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia , since then adopting
4290-535: Is commonly known as the Islamic Golden Age , in which the translations of Byzantine , Greco-Roman , Persian , and Indian texts were studied extensively. Greco-Roman ( Middle Platonic , Neoplatonic , and Aristotelian ) texts translated by the Kindi school were commented, redacted and developed substantially by Islamic intellectuals, who also built upon Persian and Indian mathematical systems, astronomy , algebra , trigonometry and medicine . The Samanid Empire in
4455-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of
4620-658: Is derived from the Persian word bērūn or bīrūn ("outskirts"), as he was born in an outlying district of Kath , the capital of the Afrighid kingdom of Khwarazm . The city, now called Beruniy, is part of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan in northwest Uzbekistan . His name was most commonly latinized as Alberonius . Al-Biruni spent the first twenty-five years of his life in Khwarezm where he studied Islamic jurisprudence , theology, grammar, mathematics, astronomy , medicine and philosophy and dabbled not only in
4785-465: Is different from that which is not inferred. Therefore the self, the existence of which has been asserted, is a unique characteristic, in as much that it is not as such the same as the body or the limbs, which have not been ascertained. Thus that which is ascertained (i.e. the self), does have a way of being sure of the existence of the soul as something other than the body, even something non-bodily; this he knows, this he should understand intuitively, if it
4950-461: Is left of his work. Following al-Farabi 's lead, Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence (Arabic: ماهية , romanized: māhiya ) and existence (Arabic: وجود , romanized: wujūd ). He argued that the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things, and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate
5115-455: Is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with
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5280-468: Is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto . The term Dari , meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon , which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia ( Parthian ). Tajik Persian ( форси́и тоҷикӣ́ , forsi-i tojikī ),
5445-570: Is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became
5610-552: Is one, eternal, and omnipotent and eschewing all forms of idol worship. He recognizes that uneducated Hindus worshiped a multiplicity of idols yet points out that even some Muslims (such as the Jabriyah ) have adopted anthropomorphic concepts of God. Al-Biruni wrote about the peoples, customs and religions of the Indian subcontinent. According to Akbar S. Ahmed, like modern anthropologists, he engaged in extensive participant observation with
5775-653: Is other than themselves'; and this is contradictory. If no differentia distinguishes them from each other, then, in no sense are these 'Existents' not the same. Avicenna adds that the 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' has no genus ( jins ), nor a definition ( hadd ), nor a counterpart ( nadd ), nor an opposite ( did ), and is detached ( bari ) from matter ( madda ), quality ( kayf ), quantity ( kam ), place ( ayn ), situation ( wad ) and time ( waqt ). Avicenna's theology on metaphysical issues ( ilāhiyyāt ) has been criticized by some Islamic scholars , among them al-Ghazali , ibn Taymiyya , and ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya . While discussing
5940-401: Is that he is ignorant of it and needs to be beaten with a stick [to realize it]. However, Avicenna posited the brain as the place where reason interacts with sensation. Sensation prepares the soul to receive rational concepts from the universal Agent Intellect. The first knowledge of the flying person would be "I am," affirming his or her essence. That essence could not be the body, obviously, as
6105-486: Is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater , founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology , rejecting
6270-580: Is true in itself, while the contingent being is 'false in itself' and 'true due to something else other than itself'. The necessary is the source of its own being without borrowed existence. It is what always exists. The Necessary exists 'due-to-Its-Self', and has no quiddity/essence other than existence. Furthermore, It is 'One' ( wahid ahad ) since there cannot be more than one 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' without differentia (fasl) to distinguish them from each other. Yet, to require differentia entails that they exist 'due-to-themselves' as well as 'due to what
6435-414: Is with kalam, distinguishes between essence and existence more clearly than Aristotelianism. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. The philosophy of Avicenna, particularly that part relating to metaphysics, owes much to al-Farabi. The search for a definitive Islamic philosophy separate from Occasionalism can be seen in what
6600-468: The Taḥqīq mā li-l-Hind mostly translation of Aryabhatta's work, in which he claims to have resolved the matter of Earth's rotation in a work on astronomy that is no longer extant, his Miftah-ilm-alhai'a (" Key to Astronomy "): [T]he rotation of the earth does in no way impair the value of astronomy, as all appearances of an astronomic character can quite as well be explained according to this theory as to
6765-529: The Danishnama . Avicenna's commentaries on Aristotle often criticized the philosopher, encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad . Avicenna's Neoplatonic scheme of emanations became fundamental in kalam in the 12th century. The Book of Healing became available in Europe in a partial Latin translation some fifty years after its composition under the title Sufficientia , and some authors have identified
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6930-486: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes
7095-502: The Kalila wa Dimna . The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca , a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on
7260-704: The British Raj , were revisited. The lunar crater Al-Biruni and the asteroid 9936 Al-Biruni are named in his honour. Biruni Island in Antarctica is named after al-Biruni. In Iran, surveying engineers are celebrated on al-Biruni's birthday. In June 2009, Iran donated a pavilion to the United Nations Office in Vienna —placed in the central Memorial Plaza of the Vienna International Center . Named
7425-651: The British colonization , Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent . It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors . The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of
7590-500: The Hadith also thrived, and Islamic philosophy, fiqh "jurisprudence", and kalam "speculative theology" were all further developed by ibn Sina and his opponents at this time. Avicenna was born in c. 980 in the village of Afshana in Transoxiana to a Persian family. The village was near the Samanid capital of Bukhara , which was his mother's hometown. His father Abd Allah was
7755-540: The Indian subcontinent and wrote a treatise on Indian culture entitled Tārīkh al-Hind (" The History of India "), after exploring the Hindu faith practiced in India. He was, for his time, an admirably impartial writer on the customs and creeds of various nations, his scholarly objectivity earning him the title al-Ustadh ("The Master") in recognition of his remarkable description of early 11th-century India. Al-Biruni's name
7920-560: The Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It
8085-849: The Khurasani cities of Nasa , Abivard , Tus , Samangan and Jajarm . He was planning to visit the ruler of the city of Gorgan, the Ziyarid Qabus ( r. 977–981, 997–1012 ), a cultivated patron of writing, whose court attracted many distinguished poets and scholars. However, when Avicenna eventually arrived, he discovered that the ruler had been dead since the winter of 1013. Avicenna then left Gorgan for Dihistan , but returned after becoming ill. There he met Abu 'Ubayd al-Juzjani (died 1070) who became his pupil and companion. Avicenna stayed briefly in Gorgan, reportedly serving Qabus's son and successor Manuchihr ( r. 1012–1031 ) and resided in
8250-581: The Mu'tazila , particularly criticising al-Jahiz and Zurqan. He also repudiated Avicenna for his views on the eternality of the universe. Of the 146 books written by al-Bīrūnī, 95 are devoted to astronomy, mathematics, and related subjects like mathematical geography. He lived during the Islamic Golden Age, when the Abbasid Caliphs promoted astronomical research, because such research possessed not only
8415-526: The Scholars Pavilion , it features the statues of four prominent Iranian scholars: Avicenna , Abu Rayhan Biruni, Zakariya Razi (Rhazes) and Omar Khayyam . A film about the life of Al-Biruni, Abu Raykhan Beruni , was released in the Soviet Union in 1974. Irrfan Khan portrayed Al-Biruni in the 1988 Doordarshan historical drama Bharat Ek Khoj . He has been portrayed by Cüneyt Uzunlar in
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#17328489460008580-655: The Sultanate of Rum , Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia , Delhi Sultanate , the Shirvanshahs , Safavids , Afsharids , Zands , Qajars , Khanate of Bukhara , Khanate of Kokand , Emirate of Bukhara , Khanate of Khiva , Ottomans , and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad . Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of
8745-688: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of
8910-483: The ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye ), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian
9075-574: The madrasahs . Avicenna memorized the Quran by the age of ten, and as an adult, wrote five treatises commenting on surahs of the Quran. One of these texts included the Proof of Prophecies , in which he comments on several Quranic verses and holds the Quran in high esteem. Avicenna argued that the Islamic prophets should be considered higher than philosophers. Avicenna is generally understood to have been aligned with
9240-423: The philosophy of science and described an early scientific method of inquiry . He discussed Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and significantly diverged from it on several points. Avicenna discussed the issue of a proper methodology for scientific inquiry and the question of "How does one acquire the first principles of a science?" He asked how a scientist would arrive at "the initial axioms or hypotheses of
9405-585: The " Persianized " Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent . It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids , Tahirids , Ziyarids , the Mughal Empire , Timurids , Ghaznavids , Karakhanids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians ,
9570-451: The 'Ahd with Bahmanyar) show that Avicenna debated philosophical points with the greatest scholars of the time. Nizami Aruzi described how before ibn Sina left Khwarazm, he had met al-Biruni (a scientist and astronomer), Abu Nasr Mansur (a renowned mathematician), Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi (a respected philosopher) and ibn al-Khammar (a great physician). The study of the Quran and
9735-614: The 450 works he is believed to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine. Avicenna is a Latin corruption of the Arabic patronym Ibn Sīnā ( ابن سينا ), meaning "Son of Sina". However, Avicenna was not the son but the great-great-grandson of a man named Sina. His formal Arabic name was Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn bin ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ḥasan bin ʿAlī bin Sīnā al-Balkhi al-Bukhari ( أبو علي الحسين بن عبد الله بن الحسن بن علي بن سينا البلخي البخاري ). Avicenna created an extensive corpus of works during what
9900-672: The Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi , are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij , Ahmad Shamlou , Simin Behbahani , Sohrab Sepehri , Rahi Mo'ayyeri , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , and Forugh Farrokhzad . There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians , Lurs , Tajiks , Hazaras , Iranian Azeris , Iranian Kurds , Balochs , Tats , Afghan Pashtuns , and Aimaqs . The term Persophone might also be used to refer to
10065-515: The Greek, the Arab/Muslim, and the Persian. Biruni also employed astronomy in the determination of his theories, which were complex mathematical equations and scientific calculation that allows one to convert dates and years between the different calendars. The book does not limit itself to tedious records of battle because Biruni found the social culture to be more important. The work includes research on
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#173284894600010230-506: The Hanafi school of Sunni thought. Avicenna studied Hanafi law, many of his notable teachers were Hanafi jurists, and he served under the Hanafi court of Ali ibn Mamun. Avicenna said at an early age that he remained "unconvinced" by Ismaili missionary attempts to convert him. Medieval historian Ẓahīr al-dīn al-Bayhaqī (d. 1169) believed Avicenna to be a follower of the Brethren of Purity . While he
10395-443: The Indians Recount, the Reasonable and the Unreasonable , or The book confirming what pertains to India, whether rational or despicable , in which he explored nearly every aspect of Indian life. During his journey through India, military and political history were not Biruni's main focus: he decided rather to document the civilian and scholarly aspects of Hindu life, examining culture, science, and religion. He explored religion within
10560-500: The Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi , by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian , exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian ( فارسی , fārsi ). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari ( دری , dari ) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it
10725-429: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After
10890-528: The Past") on historical and scientific chronology, probably around 1000, though he later made some amendments to the book. He also visited the court of the Bavandid ruler Al-Marzuban . Accepting the definite demise of the Afrighids at the hands of the Ma'munids, he made peace with the latter who then ruled Khwarezm . Their court at Gorganj (also in Khwarezm) was gaining fame for its gathering of brilliant scientists. In 1017, Mahmud of Ghazni captured Rey. Most scholars, including al-Biruni, were taken to Ghazni,
11055-439: The Peripatetic school. al-Biruni began by asking eighteen questions, ten of which were criticisms of Aristotle's On the Heavens . Ibn Sina was a devout Muslim and sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic theology. He aimed to prove the existence of God and His creation of the world scientifically and through reason and logic . His views on Islamic theology and philosophy were enormously influential, forming part of
11220-459: The Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription , dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey, and Egypt . Old Persian
11385-425: The Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki . He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in
11550-401: The Persian model: Ottoman Turkish , Chagatai Turkic , Dobhashi Bengali , and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry . This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under
11715-487: The Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world , with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia , the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages,
11880-479: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised
12045-575: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
12210-518: The Science of Numbers, then to the structure of the Universe and finally to Judicial Astrology [ sic ], for no one who is worthy of the style and title of Astrologer [ sic ] who is not thoroughly conversant with these for sciences." In these earlier chapters he lays the foundations for the final chapter, on astrological prognostication , which he criticises. In a later work, he wrote
12375-457: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of
12540-627: The Truthful " ( wajib al-wujud ). Avicenna argued that there must be a Proof of the Truthful, an entity that cannot not exist and through a series of arguments, he identified it with God in Islam . Present-day historian of philosophy Peter Adamson called this argument one of the most influential medieval arguments for God's existence, and Avicenna's biggest contribution to the history of philosophy. Correspondence between ibn Sina with his student Ahmad ibn ʿAli al-Maʿsumi and al-Biruni has survived in which they debated Aristotelian natural philosophy and
12705-420: The absolute, universal, and certain premises that it purports to provide." In its place, he developed a "method of experimentation as a means for scientific inquiry." Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to
12870-570: The advisor, if not vizier of Ala al-Dawla, accompanying him in many of his military expeditions and travels. Avicenna dedicated two Persian works to him, a philosophical treatise named Danish-nama-yi Ala'i ("Book of Science for Ala"), and a medical treatise about the pulse. During the brief occupation of Isfahan by the Ghaznavids in January 1030, Avicenna and Ala al-Dawla relocated to the southwestern Iranian region of Khuzistan , where they stayed until
13035-523: The affairs of Ḵᵛārazm ") is now known only from quotations in Bayhaqī's Tārīkh-e Masʿūdī. In addition to this various discussions of historical events and methodology are found in connection with the lists of kings in his al-Āthār al-bāqiya and in the Qānūn as well as elsewhere in the Āthār, in India, and scattered throughout his other works. Al-Biruni's Chronology of Ancient Nations attempted to accurately establish
13200-445: The air in any way that compels him to feel it, and with his limbs separated so that they do not come in contact with or touch each other. Then contemplate the following: can he be assured of the existence of himself? He does not have any doubt in that his self exists, without thereby asserting that he has any exterior limbs, nor any internal organs, neither heart nor brain, nor any one of the exterior things at all; but rather he can affirm
13365-493: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before
13530-405: The argument of Aristotle, that there is a change in the creator. He further argued that stating there is a change in the creator would mean there is a change in the effect (meaning the universe has change) and that the universe coming into being after not being is such a change (and so arguing there is no change – no beginning – means Aristotle believes the creator is negated). Al-Biruni was proud of
13695-745: The body's afterlife. There are occasional brief hints and allusions in his longer works, however, that Avicenna considered philosophy as the only sensible way to distinguish real prophecy from illusion. He did not state this more clearly because of the political implications of such a theory if prophecy could be questioned, and also because most of the time he was writing shorter works which concentrated on explaining his theories on philosophy and theology clearly, without digressing to consider epistemological matters which could only be properly considered by other philosophers. Later interpretations of Avicenna's philosophy split into three different schools; those (such as al-Tusi ) who continued to apply his philosophy as
13860-490: The capital of the Ghaznavid dynasty. Biruni was made court astrologer and accompanied Mahmud on his invasions into India, living there for a few years. He was 44 when he went on the journeys with Mahmud of Ghazni. Biruni became acquainted with all things related to India. During this time he wrote his study of India, finishing it around 1030. Along with his writing, Al-Biruni also made sure to extend his study to science while on
14025-457: The code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari ( prs ) and Iranian Persian ( pes ). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history ; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being
14190-512: The collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script . From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi , which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by
14355-517: The core of the curriculum at Islamic religious schools until the 19th century. Avicenna wrote several short treatises dealing with Islamic theology. These included treatises on the prophets and messengers in Islam , whom he viewed as "inspired philosophers", and also on various scientific and philosophical interpretations of the Quran, such as how Quranic cosmology corresponds to his philosophical system. In general, these treatises linked his philosophical writings to Islamic religious ideas; for example,
14520-467: The death of the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud ( r. 998–1030 ), which occurred two months later. It was seemingly when Avicenna returned to Isfahan that he started writing his Pointers and Reminders . In 1037, while Avicenna was accompanying Ala al-Dawla to a battle near Isfahan, he contracted a severe colic, which he had been suffering from throughout his life. He died shortly afterwards in Hamadan, where he
14685-505: The debate, Avicenna sent a letter to the Baghdad Peripatetics, asking if Abu'l-Qasim's claim that he shared the same opinion as them was true. Abu'l-Qasim later retaliated by writing a letter to an unknown person in which he made accusations so serious that ibn Sina wrote to Abu Sa'd, the deputy of Majd al-Dawla, to investigate the matter. The accusation made towards Avicenna may have been the same as he had received earlier, in which he
14850-462: The difference in daylight hours by latitude, seasons and Earth's relative positions with Moon and stars. At the same time, Biruni was also critical of Indian scribes, who he believed carelessly corrupted Indian documents while making copies of older documents. He also criticized the Hindus on what he saw them do and not do, for example finding them deficient in curiosity about history and religion. One of
15015-520: The earth, such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some soft, some hard ... It would require a long period of time for all such changes to be accomplished, during which the mountains themselves might be somewhat diminished in size. In the Al-Burhan ( On Demonstration ) section of The Book of Healing , Avicenna discussed
15180-491: The eastern part of Persia, Greater Khorasan , and Central Asia , as well as the Buyid dynasty in the western part of Persia and Iraq , provided a thriving atmosphere for scholarly and cultural development. Under the Samanids, Bukhara rivaled Baghdad for cultural capital of the Muslim world . There, Avicenna had access to the great libraries of Balkh , Khwarazm , Gorgan , Rey , Isfahan and Hamadan . Various texts (such as
15345-509: The example of polydactyly to explain his perception that causal reasons exist for all medical events. This view of medical phenomena anticipated developments in the Enlightenment by seven centuries. Avicenna wrote on Earth sciences such as geology in The Book of Healing . While discussing the formation of mountains , he explained: Either they are the effects of upheavals of the crust of
15510-399: The existence of himself, without thereby asserting there that this self has any extension in space. Even if it were possible for him in that state to imagine a hand or any other limb, he would not imagine it as being a part of his self, nor as a condition for the existence of that self; for as you know that which is asserted is different from that which is not asserted and that which is inferred
15675-459: The expeditions. He sought to find a method to measure the height of the sun, and created a makeshift quadrant for that purpose. Al-Biruni was able to make much progress in his study over the frequent travels that he went on throughout the lands of India. Belonging to the Sunni Ash'ari school, al-Biruni nevertheless also associated with Maturidi theologians. He was however, very critical of
15840-535: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak
16005-406: The fact that he followed the textual evidence of the religion without being influenced by Greek philosophers such as Aristotle. Al-Biruni contributed to the introduction of the scientific method to medieval mechanics . He developed experimental methods to determine density, using a particular type of hydrostatic balance . Al-Biruni's method of using the hydrostatic balance was precise, and he
16170-471: The field of physics, but also in those of most of the other sciences. The Iranian Khwarezmian language , which was Biruni's mother tongue, survived for several centuries after Islam until the Turkification of the region – at least some of the culture of ancient Khwarezm endured – for it is hard to imagine that the commanding figure of Biruni, a repository of so much knowledge, should have appeared in
16335-495: The first anthropologist . Al-Biruni was well versed in physics , mathematics, astronomy , and natural sciences , and also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist , and linguist . He studied almost all the sciences of his day and was rewarded abundantly for his tireless research in many fields of knowledge. Royalty and other powerful elements in society funded al-Biruni's research and sought him out with specific projects in mind. Influential in his own right, Al-Biruni
16500-416: The flying person has no sensation. Thus, the knowledge that "I am" is the core of a human being: the soul exists and is self-aware. Avicenna thus concluded that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing , and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms , but as a primary given, a substance . The body is unnecessary; in relation to it, the soul is its perfection. In itself,
16665-475: The following phylogenetic classification: Al-Biruni Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni / æ l b ɪ ˈ r uː n i / ( Persian : ابوریحان بیرونی ; Arabic : أبو الريحان البيروني ; 973 – after 1050), known as al-Biruni , was a Khwarazmian Iranian scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age . He has been called variously "Father of Comparative Religion ", "Father of modern geodesy ", Founder of Indology and
16830-562: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to
16995-471: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like
17160-795: The house of a patron. In c. 1014 , Avicenna went to the city of Ray , where he entered into the service of the Buyid amir Majd al-Dawla ( r. 997–1029 ) and his mother Sayyida Shirin , the de facto ruler of the realm. There he served as the physician at the court, treating Majd al-Dawla, who was suffering from melancholia . Avicenna reportedly later served as the "business manager" of Sayyida Shirin in Qazvin and Hamadan , though details regarding this tenure are unclear. During this period, Avicenna finished writing The Canon of Medicine and started writing his The Book of Healing . In 1015, during Avicenna's stay in Hamadan , he participated in
17325-412: The human mind and imparts order and intelligibility to nature. Following is an English translation of the argument: One of us (i.e. a human being) should be imagined as having been created in a single stroke; created perfect and complete but with his vision obscured so that he cannot perceive external entities; created falling through air or a void, in such a manner that he is not struck by the firmness of
17490-563: The impossible being is that which cannot exist, while the contingent in itself ( mumkin bi-dhatihi ) has the potentiality to be or not to be without entailing a contradiction. When actualized, the contingent becomes a 'necessary existent due to what is other than itself' ( wajib al-wujud bi-ghayrihi ). Thus, contingency-in-itself is potential beingness that could eventually be actualized by an external cause other than itself. The metaphysical structures of necessity and contingency are different. Necessary being due to itself ( wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi )
17655-929: The interests of the nation. His details are brief and mostly just list rulers without referring to their real names, and he did not go on about deeds that each one carried out during their reign, which keeps in line with Biruni's mission to try to stay away from political histories. Biruni also described the geography of India in his work. He documented different bodies of water and other natural phenomena. These descriptions are useful to today's modern historians because they are able to use Biruni's scholarship to locate certain destinations in modern-day India. Historians are able to make some matches while also concluding that certain areas seem to have disappeared and been replaced with different cities. Different forts and landmarks were able to be located, legitimizing Biruni's contributions with their usefulness to even modern history and archeology. The dispassionate account of Hinduism given by Biruni
17820-461: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed
17985-423: The length of various historical eras. Biruni is widely considered to be one of the most important Muslim authorities on the history of religion. He is known as a pioneer in the field of comparative religion in his study of, among other creeds, Zoroastrianism , Judaism, Hinduism , Christianity, Buddhism and Islam . He assumed the superiority of Islam: "We have here given an account of these things in order that
18150-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following
18315-442: The midst of a world of clashing swords, burning towns, and plundered temples." Biruni's writing was very poetic, which may diminish some of the historical value of the work for modern times. The lack of description of battle and politics makes those parts of the picture completely lost. However, many have used Biruni's work to check facts of history in other works that may have been ambiguous or had their validity questioned. Most of
18480-525: The most widely spoken. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus , the adjectival form of Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which means " Persia " (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars ). According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term Persian as
18645-493: The movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be due to an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexist with its effect. Avicenna's consideration of the essence-attributes question may be elucidated in terms of his ontological analysis of the modalities of being; namely impossibility, contingency and necessity. Avicenna argued that
18810-461: The nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic , Russian , French , and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created
18975-495: The necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography , were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal
19140-414: The next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire , and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian
19305-713: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became
19470-529: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in
19635-412: The other. There are, however, other reasons which make it impossible. This question is most difficult to solve. The most prominent of both modern and ancient astronomers have deeply studied the question of the moving of the earth, and tried to refute it. We, too, have composed a book on the subject called Miftah-ilm-alhai'a (Key to Astronomy) , in which we think we have surpassed our predecessors, if not in
19800-423: The philosopher Ibn Sina in a multiple letter correspondence. Al-Biruni stated: "Other people, besides, hold this foolish persuasion, that time has no terminus quo at all." He further stated that Aristotle , whose arguments Avicenna uses, contradicted himself when he stated that the universe and matter has a start whilst holding on to the idea that matter is pre-eternal. In his letters to Avicenna, he stated
19965-628: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian
20130-474: The radius of the Earth using measurements of the height of a hill and measurement of the dip in the horizon from the top of that hill. His calculated radius for the Earth of 3928.77 miles was 2% higher than the actual mean radius of 3847.80 miles. His estimate was given as 12,803,337 cubits , so the accuracy of his estimate compared to the modern value depends on what conversion is used for cubits. The exact length of
20295-524: The reader may learn by the comparative treatment of the subject how much superior the institutions of Islam are, and how more plainly this contrast brings out all customs and usages, differing from those of Islam, in their essential foulness." However he was happy on occasion to express admiration for other cultures, and quoted directly from the sacred texts of other religions when reaching his conclusions. He strove to understand them on their own terms rather than trying to prove them wrong. His underlying concept
20460-948: The reader the theories of the Hindus exactly as they are, and I shall mention in connection with them similar theories of the Greeks in order to show the relationship existing between them. An example of Biruni's analysis is his summary of why many Hindus hate Muslims. Biruni notes in the beginning of his book how the Muslims had a hard time learning about Hindu knowledge and culture. He explains that Hinduism and Islam are totally different from each other. Moreover, Hindus in 11th century India had suffered waves of destructive attacks on many of its cities, and Islamic armies had taken numerous Hindu slaves to Persia, which – claimed Biruni – contributed to Hindus becoming suspicious of all foreigners, not just Muslims. Hindus considered Muslims violent and impure, and did not want to share anything with them. Over time, Biruni won
20625-631: The region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire , preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in
20790-589: The reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez ; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi ; meaning mixed language . Dobhashi Bengali
20955-473: The scientific language of his age, but al-Tafhim is one of the most important of the early works of science in Persian , and is a rich source for Persian prose and lexicography . The book covers the Quadrivium in a detailed and skilled fashion. Following Al-Biruni's death, his work was neither built upon or referenced by scholars. Centuries later, his writings about India, which had become of interest to
21120-446: The service of Abu al-Hasan Ali. Under the Ma'munids, Gurganj became a centre of learning, attracting many prominent figures, such as ibn Sina and his former teacher Abu Sahl al-Masihi, the mathematician Abu Nasr Mansur, the physician ibn al-Khammar, and the philologist al-Tha'alibi . Avicenna later moved due to "necessity" once more (in 1012), this time to the west. There he travelled through
21285-657: The site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo , was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi . The Persian language influenced
21450-505: The soul is an immaterial substance. Avicenna authored a five-volume medical encyclopedia, The Canon of Medicine ( Arabic : القانون في الطب , romanized : al-Qānūn fī l-ṭibb ). It was used as the standard medical textbook in the Islamic world and Europe up to the 18th century. The Canon still plays an important role in Unani medicine . Avicenna considered whether events like rare diseases or disorders have natural causes. He used
21615-460: The specific aspects of Hindu life that Biruni studied was the Hindu calendar . His scholarship on the topic exhibited great determination and focus, not to mention the excellence in his approach of the in-depth research he performed. He developed a method for converting the dates of the Hindu calendar to the dates of the three different calendars that were common in the Islamic countries of his time period,
21780-507: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses
21945-741: The standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility . Nevertheless,
22110-450: The thought experiment points to the conclusions that the soul is a perfection, independent of the body, and an immaterial substance. The conceivability of this "Floating Man" indicates that the soul is perceived intellectually, which entails the soul's separateness from the body. Avicenna referred to the living human intelligence , particularly the active intellect , which he believed to be the hypostasis by which God communicates truth to
22275-450: The time Avicenna was eighteen, he was well-educated in Greek sciences . Although ibn Sina only mentions al-Natili as his teacher in his autobiography , he most likely had other teachers as well, such as the physicians Qumri and Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi. At the age of seventeen, Avicenna was made a physician of Nuh II. By the time Avicenna was at least 21 years old, his father died. He
22440-509: The topic of density, including the different types of densities and how they are measured. His work on the subject was very influential and was later used by scientists like Galileo and Newton in their own research. Bīrūnī devised a novel method of determining the Earth's radius by means of the observation of the height of a mountain. He carried it out at Nandana in Pind Dadan Khan (present-day Pakistan). He used trigonometry to calculate
22605-587: The true value. In his Codex Masudicus (1037), Al-Biruni theorized the existence of a landmass along the vast ocean between Asia and Europe, or what is today known as the Americas. He argued for its existence on the basis of his accurate estimations of the Earth's circumference and Afro-Eurasia 's size, which he found spanned only two-fifths of the Earth's circumference, reasoning that the geological processes that gave rise to Eurasia must surely have given rise to lands in
22770-407: The two men just mentioned. [...] The sum of what we regard as the authentic philosophy of Aristotle, as transmitted by al-Farabi and Avicenna, can be reduced to three parts: a part which must be branded as unbelief; a part which must be stigmatized as innovation; and a part which need not be repudiated at all. Avicenna made an argument for the existence of God which would be known as the " Proof of
22935-478: The use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi ( Pārsik in Middle Persian ), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian . In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in
23100-590: The vast ocean between Asia and Europe. He also theorized that at least some of the unknown landmass would lie within the known latitudes which humans could inhabit, and therefore would be inhabited. Biruni wrote a pharmacopoeia , the Kitab al-saydala fi al-tibb (" Book on the Pharmacopoeia of Medicine "). It lists synonyms for drug names in Syriac, Persian, Greek, Baluchi, Afghan, Kurdi, and some Indian languages. He used
23265-529: The views of the theists among the Greek philosophers, namely Socrates , Plato and Aristotle in Al-Munqidh min ad-Dalal "Deliverance from Error", al-Ghazali noted: [the Greek philosophers] must be taxed with unbelief, as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers, such as Avicenna and al-Farabi and their likes. None, however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle's lore as did
23430-473: The welcome of Hindu scholars. Al-Biruni collected books and studied with these Hindu scholars to become fluent in Sanskrit, discover and translate into Arabic the mathematics, science, medicine, astronomy and other fields of arts as practiced in 11th-century India. He was inspired by the arguments offered by Indian scholars who believed earth must be globular in shape, which they felt was the only way to fully explain
23595-576: The words, at all events in the matter. In his major astronomical work, the Mas'ud Canon , Biruni observed that, contrary to Ptolemy , the Sun's apogee (highest point in the heavens) was mobile, not fixed. He wrote a treatise on the astrolabe , describing how to use it to tell the time and as a quadrant for surveying. One particular diagram of an eight-geared device could be considered an ancestor of later Muslim astrolabes and clocks. More recently, Biruni's eclipse data
23760-581: The works of Al-Biruni are in Arabic although he seemingly wrote the Kitab al-Tafhim in both Persian and Arabic, showing his mastery over both languages. Bīrūnī's catalogue of his own literary production up to his 65th lunar/63rd solar year (the end of 427/1036) lists 103 titles divided into 12 categories: astronomy, mathematical geography, mathematics, astrological aspects and transits, astronomical instruments, chronology, comets, an untitled category, astrology, anecdotes, religion, and books he no longer possesses. Biruni wrote most of his works in Arabic ,
23925-535: The year in which the Samanid Empire fell after the Kara-Khanid Khanate captured Bukhara and imprisoned the Samanid emir Abd al-Malik II . Due to his high position and strong connection with the Samanids, ibn Sina may have found himself in an unfavorable position after the fall of his suzerain. It was through the minister of Gurganj, Abu'l-Husayn as-Sahi, a patron of Greek sciences, that Avicenna entered into
24090-430: Was able to measure the density of many different substances, including precious metals, gems, and even air. He also used this method to determine the radius of the earth, which he did by measuring the angle of elevation of the horizon from the top of a mountain and comparing it to the angle of elevation of the horizon from a nearby plain. In addition to developing the hydrostatic balance, Al-Biruni also wrote extensively on
24255-412: Was accused by the people of Hamadan of copying the stylistic structures of the Quran in his Sermons on Divine Unity . The seriousness of this charge, in the words of the historian Peter Adamson, "cannot be underestimated in the larger Muslim culture." Not long afterwards, Avicenna shifted his allegiance to the rising Buyid amir Shams al-Dawla , the younger brother of Majd al-Dawla, which Adamson suggests
24420-578: Was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first poems of
24585-458: Was asked to stay as vizier by Shams al-Dawla's son and successor Sama' al-Dawla ( r. 1021–1023 ), but he instead went into hiding with his patron, Abu Ghalib al-Attar, to wait for better opportunities to emerge. It was during this period that Avicenna was secretly in contact with Ala al-Dawla Muhammad ( r. 1008–1041 ), the Kakuyid ruler of Isfahan and uncle of Sayyida Shirin. It
24750-467: Was buried. Avicenna wrote extensively on early Islamic philosophy , especially the subjects logic , ethics and metaphysics , including treatises named Logic and Metaphysics . Most of his works were written in Arabic, then the language of science in the Muslim world, and some in Early New Persian. Of linguistic significance even to this day are a few books that he wrote in Persian, particularly
24915-484: Was due to Abu'l-Qasim also working under Sayyida Shirin. Avicenna had been called upon by Shams al-Dawla to treat him, but after the latter's campaign in the same year against his former ally, the Annazid ruler Abu Shawk ( r. 1010–1046 ), he forced Avicenna to become his vizier . Although Avicenna would sometimes clash with Shams al-Dawla's troops, he remained vizier until the latter died of colic in 1021. Avicenna
25080-469: Was during his stay at Attar's home that Avicenna completed The Book of Healing , writing 50 pages a day. The Buyid court in Hamadan, particularly the Kurdish vizier Taj al-Mulk, suspected Avicenna of correspondence with Ala al-Dawla, and as a result, had the house of Attar ransacked and ibn Sina imprisoned in the fortress of Fardajan, outside Hamadan. Juzjani blames one of ibn Sina's informers for his capture. He
25245-528: Was himself influenced by the scholars of other nations, such as the Greeks, from whom he took inspiration when he turned to the study of philosophy. A gifted linguist, he was conversant in Khwarezmian , Persian , Arabic, and Sanskrit , and also knew Greek , Hebrew , and Syriac . He spent much of his life in Ghazni , then capital of the Ghaznavids , in modern-day central-eastern Afghanistan. In 1017, he travelled to
25410-446: Was imprisoned for four months until Ala al-Dawla captured Hamadan, ending Sama al-Dawla's reign. Avicenna was subsequently released, and went to Isfahan, where he was well received by Ala al-Dawla. In the words of Juzjani, the Kakuyid ruler gave Avicenna "the respect and esteem which someone like him deserved." Adamson also says that Avicenna's service under Ala al-Dawla "proved to be the most stable period of his life." Avicenna served as
25575-399: Was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, Avicenna wrote his famous " floating man "—literally falling man—a thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality and immateriality of the soul. Avicenna believed his "Floating Man" thought experiment demonstrated that the soul is a substance, and claimed humans cannot doubt their own consciousness, even in
25740-780: Was of the Peripatetic school derived from Aristotelianism . His most famous works are The Book of Healing , a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine , a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval European universities and remained in use as late as 1650. Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna's corpus includes writings on astronomy , alchemy , geography and geology , psychology , Islamic theology , logic , mathematics , physics , and works of poetry . Avicenna wrote most of his philosophical and scientific works in Arabic , but also wrote several key works in Persian , while his poetic works were written in both languages. Of
25905-586: Was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal , and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent . Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in
26070-496: Was remarkable for its time. He stated that he was fully objective in his writings, remaining unbiased like a proper historian should. Biruni documented everything about India just as it happened. But, he did note how some of the accounts of information that he was given by natives of the land may not have been reliable in terms of complete accuracy, however, he did try to be as honest as possible in his writing. Eduard Sachau compares it to "a magic island of quiet, impartial research in
26235-608: Was schooled in fiqh by the Hanafi jurist Ismail al-Zahid. Sometime later, his father invited the physician and philosopher al-Natili to their house to educate ibn Sina. Together, they studied the Isagoge of Porphyry (died 305) and possibly the Categories of Aristotle (died 322 BCE) as well. After Avicenna had read the Almagest of Ptolemy (died 170) and Euclid's Elements , al-Natili told him to continue his research independently. By
26400-453: Was seemingly administered by his father. Although both Avicenna's father and brother had converted to Isma'ilism , he himself did not follow the faith. He was instead a Hanafi Sunni , the same school followed by the Samanids. Avicenna was first schooled in the Quran and literature, and by the age of 10, he had memorized the entire Quran . He was later sent by his father to an Indian greengrocer, who taught him arithmetic . Afterwards, he
26565-599: Was subsequently given an administrative post, possibly succeeding his father as the governor of Harmaytan. Avicenna later moved to Gurganj , the capital of Khwarazm, which he reports that he did due to "necessity". The date he went to the place is uncertain, as he reports that he served the Khwarazmshah , the ruler of Khwarazm, the Ma'munid ruler Abu al-Hasan Ali . The latter ruled from 997 to 1009, which indicates that Avicenna moved sometime during that period. He may have moved in 999,
26730-600: Was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas . Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans ( Rumelia ), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa , in
26895-440: Was that all cultures are at least distant relatives of all other cultures because they are all human constructs. "Rather, what Al-Biruni seems to be arguing is that there is a common human element in every culture that makes all cultures distant relatives, however foreign they might seem to one another." Al-Biruni divides Hindus into an educated and an uneducated class. He describes the educated as monotheistic, believing that God
27060-484: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راهآهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in
27225-522: Was used by Dunthorne in 1749 to help determine the acceleration of the Moon , and his data on equinox times and eclipses was used as part of a study of Earth's past rotation. Like later adherents of the Ash'ari school, such as al-Ghazali , al-Biruni is famous for vehemently defending the majority Sunni position that the universe had a beginning, being a strong supporter of creatio ex nihilo , specifically refuting
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