Ibn Sina

Hello! My name is Ibn Sina, but some people know me by another name, Avicenna. I was born a very long time ago, around the year 980, in a village near a busy city called Bukhara. Even when I was a little boy, I was so curious and loved to learn new things. I read every single book I could find and always asked my teachers a million questions about the world. I learned so quickly that by the time I was 10 years old, I had already memorized the entire Qur'an, which is a very important holy book.

Out of all the subjects I studied, my favorite was medicine. I wanted to understand how our bodies worked so I could help people when they were sick. I studied day and night, and by the time I was 18 years old, I was already a doctor. One day, the ruler, a prince, became very ill. None of his other doctors could figure out how to help him. I used all my knowledge to find out what was wrong, and soon, he was healthy again. The prince was so grateful that he gave me a special reward. He told me I could use his royal library, which was filled with more amazing books than I had ever seen in my life.

After that, I traveled to many different places and learned even more about medicine. I wanted to share everything I knew with other people so they could help the sick, too. I decided to write it all down in one big book. Around the year 1025, I finished my most famous book, which I called The Canon of Medicine. It was a huge encyclopedia that gathered all the medical ideas from my time into one place. In my book, I wrote about everything from how to set a broken bone to what kinds of herbs could help a tummy ache.

I lived to be about 57 years old, and I spent my whole life learning and writing to help others. My books, especially The Canon of Medicine, were so helpful that they traveled all over the world. For more than 600 years, doctors in many different countries used my book to learn how to care for their patients. I am happy that my curiosity and my love for helping others made a difference for so many people, long after I was gone.