Christian teacher of medicine (137 in Figure 8.2) from Baghdad (who thus
probably constituted a network connection to Yahya ibn-ÀAdi), who introduced
him to the issues debated at the center, and especially its logic. Medicine was
the main social base for cosmopolitan intellectuals, and Ibn Sina made his
greatest reputation through his encyclopedic synthesis of Greek and Arabic
medical texts. In addition, IsmaÀili missionaries who visited his father no doubt
brought him into contact with the “Epistles” of the Brethren of Purity.
Most important, at the Khwarazm court the young Ibn Sina encountered
al-Biruni, one of the scientific stars of Islam (Afnan, 1958: 62–71; DSB, 1981:
2:147–156). Al-Biruni was a great astronomer and a famous geographer, the
first Muslim expert on India; a cosmopolitan both of thought and of travel,
he connects back into the scientific network at Baghdad in its last generation
of greatness, including the important mathematician and astronomer AbuÁ-l-
Wafa al-Buzjani (147 in Figure 8.2), as well as to Christian logicians from the
lineage of Yahya ibn ÀAdi. In the network we can see that the generations just
before and after 1000 are nearly the last to be full of scientific stars: besides
those just mentioned, there is Ibn Yunus (159) at Cairo, one of the greatest
astronomers; Ibn al-Haitham (known to the Latins as Alhazen), famous for
his optics; and Al-Karaji (170) at Baghdad, who developed the arithmeticiza-
tion of algebra and the calculation of polynomials. Alhazen, contemporary of
al-Biruni and Ibn Sina, also migrated away from Iraq to new sources of
patronage in Cairo. One can surmise that Ibn Sina first acquired creative energy
from these contacts early in his career; his first field of endeavor was scientific,
primarily medicine, and he also compiled new astronomical tables.
When al-Biruni and the other stars of the Khwarazm court were called by
the conqueror to Ghazna, Ibn Sina fled in the other direction. He moved into
western Persia, becoming court physician, sometimes vizier, and sometimes
living under private patronage at Rayy, Hamadan, and Isfahan, embattled
states between the crumbling Baghdad empire and the expanding Ghaznavids.
It appears that he was fleeing the religious intolerance of the conqueror; his
travels are reminiscent of those of Descartes, who moved between Catholic
and Protestant battle lines during the European religious wars; both sought a
safe spot in the middle where they could take advantage of the opportuni-
ties for intellectual synthesis opened up by the rearrangement of cultural con-
nections.
Ibn Sina turned from his Canon of medicine to composing an encyclopedia
of philosophy. He took over the Neoplatonic cosmology of al-Farabi and the
Aristotelean logic developed by the Baghdad school of Christian logicians, but
he formulated metaphysical issues in their own right and with a thoroughness
and depth that went beyond anything in his predecessors. His originality is
seen above all in the prologue which he adds to the Neoplatonic system. Before
418 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths