AVICENNA’S MUSEUM IN HIS NATIVE AFSHONA

Abstract

Ibn Sina, better known to the Western medical historians by his Latin nickname Avicenna, is considered the third most important physician in medical history, along with the Greek physician Hippocrates and the Roman physician Galen. He was born around 980 in Afshona near Bukhara on the Silk Road in present-day Uzbekistan and died in 1037 in Hamadan near Tehran in present-day Iran. Among his greatest contributions to the development of medicine is his work entitled The Canon of Medicine, in which he summarized all the previous medical knowledge, which is why it has been used for centuries as a basic medical textbook. In recent times, in connection with the controversy over the naming of the medieval caliphate medicine, with the aim of formulating an inclusive term, which would not emphasize any involved group to the detriment of the others, paradoxically in the focus of the research of the in it interested historians of medicine, instead of the achievements of the individual doctors from the mentioned era, came the determination of their ethnic and religious affiliation, including Avicenna’s, all the more so because he came from the disputed area of the conflicts between different nations and opposing religions. In doing so, scientific discussions are increasingly joined by the erection of the representative architectural structures in the places related to the individual doctors, one of which is the representative Avicenna Museum in Afshona.