Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Ibn Miskawayh
Ibn Miskawayh was of Persian and Zoroastrian origin, but either he or his father was converted to Islam. Living during the tenth century, he joined the court of the Daylamite princes of Persia,. He studied philosophy, medicine, and chemistry, and wrote a book-on these subjects as well as on ethics and history. His philosophy had a moral basis.
Ibn Sina (980 -1030 A.D.)
Abu Ali Ibn Sina. known in the West as Avicenna, was descended from inhabitants of Balkh, in northern Afghanistan. His father went to Bukhara, the capital of the Samanid Empire, and Avicenna was born (980) in a suburb of the city. He was educated there under the guidance of his father, a distinguished scholar. Heshowed genius from his youth and at sixteen had already assimilated much of the knowledge of his time, proving particularly brilliant in medicine and philosophy.

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Political and Cultural History of Islam

He practiced medicine from an early age, and while treatim, the emperor Nouh, he was admitted to the court. During that time he studied logic and philosophy intensely, having at his disposal the famous library of the Kings of Bukhara. Unfortunately that librarv caught fire, and he was among the few who remembered what he studied there. Events which were to bring about the collapse of the Samanid Empire forced Ibn Sina to leave Bukhara. He was twentvtwo when he went to Khwarizm. When the emperor Mahmud of Ghazna imposed his suzerainty on the sovereign of Khwarizm, Ibn Sina was there with the celebrated mathematician, historian, and philosopher, al-Beiruni.
They were _ invited by Mahmud to join his court in Afghanistan. Al Beiruni went, but Ibn Sina, unwilling to accept the orthodoxy of the sultan, changed his itinerary and went to Gorgan, where he composed his masterpiece on medicine, The Canon. Form Gorgan he travelled to Ray and Qazwin and reached Hamadan where the prince of Hamadan appointed him his first minister. When the prince died and his son succeeded him, a military clique accused. Ibn Sina of high treason and he was imprisoned in a fortress. He escaped and went to Ispahan, where he joined the court of its prince. When the ruler of Ispahan undertook a campaign against Hamadan. Avicenna accompanied him and died there as a result of exhaustion, in 1030.
His works embrace the entire domain of science and all the knowledge of his time. He wrote minor works on theological matters and a famous treatise on logic, physics, mathematics and astronomy called Shifa, or ”Recovery”. Other distinguished works on logic are The Book of Theorems and Warnings and The Sources of Philosophy, which also deals with physics and theology. Avicenna’s works on the physical and natural sciences are numerous and he also wrote several poetical works in Arabic and Persian. About one hundred of his books have been translated by Europeans since the twelfth century. His works were used in European universities until the eighteenth century. The philosophy of Avicenna was influenced by the Peripatetics and the Neoplatonists, but the originality of his concepts in pronounced. He presumes to discuss Aristotle, he believed in the dynamism of force and not in its static condition. He made original studies on questions of time_ and movement, the divisibility of matter, the conduction of light and heat, etc.
Eminent Scholars of Medieval Islam 867
His theories of vacuum were utilized by Galileo and Toricelli, and Roemer adapted his ideas on the propagation of light for the measurement of the speed. In the Avicenna’s system, as in other medieval philosophies, physics is closely linked with psychology and metaphysics, thereby weakening its scientific authority. The philosophical system of Avicenna ascends form physics to metaphysics. In other words, he believed that humanity had its root in inanimate matter and ascended toward the divine.
In psychology, Avicenna studied the soul as an entity distinct from the intellect. For him, the soul represents the totality of the faculties which have been added to matter, making it active. He divides the soul into three species the vegetal soul, the animal soul, and the reasonable or intelligent soul. The vegetal soul possesses three faculties generation, growth, and nutrition. In addition to the faculties of the vegetal soul, the animal soul has the faculty of voluntary movement, and is able to grasp particulars. The reasonable soul is the property of man it has the power to seize the universals and to act on man’s free choice. This faculty in the reasonable soul is added to the faculties of the vegetal and animal souls.
In metaphysics, Avicenna was greatly influenced by Farabi, reflecting the Aristotlism and Neoplatonist tendencies of his predecessor. His ideas on the production of beings and causality were influenced by Plotinus, who taught the evolution of one to multiple, and of eternal to temporal. Avicenna’s conception of divinity is one of a pure and emanating intellect, whereby all spiritual and material elements have pre-determined place in the universe. The philosophical system of Avicenna is colored by his unique mysticism. Unlike that of Ghazzali, which proceeds from asceticism and a heart overflowing with the love of God, it originates with the intellect and ascends in majesty and serenity of spirit toward the height of contemplation. For Avicenna, the dissolution of the human intellect in the intelligence of God is the triumphant goal of supreme felicity. The rationalism of Avicenna engendered much opposition from the theologians of Islamic scholasticism, but his monumental works survived every adversity. The Brethren of Sincerity (Ikhwan-us-Safa)
After 945 A.D., the Persian Shi’ite element was in power at the court of Baghdad and the philosophers and rationalists found it
’ M Saeed Sheikh. Muslim Philosophy. P 116.

Political and Cultural Histon/ of Islam advisable to organize secret philosophical societies for the propagation of their ideas. The most famous of these societies, sheltering itself under the heterodoxy of the Shi’ite prime ministers of the caliphs was called the Brethren of Sincerity. They anonymously published several treatises on the knowledge of their time. Many members of that society belonged to the schools of Mu’tazela or were philosophers of the Greek schools. The works published by this group embraced logic, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, as well as psychology and theology. Fifty-two of them exist today, and some scholars believe that they originally numbered fifty-four. The activities of this society, like those of the followers of the Mu’tazela and the philosophers of Greek style, encountered increasing opposition from the scholastic theologians and the traditionalists.