o was his
benefactor. He was four years in prison, but at last succeeded in
deceiving his guardians, and escaped. His dangerous travels, and the
depression of mind inseparable from reverses of fortune, however,
never interrupted his scientific pursuits. His taste for study and his
activity were such that, as he himself informs us, not a single day
passed in which he had not written fifty leaflets. The list of
manuscripts left by him, and scattered in various libraries of Europe,
is considerable, and though many of his works have been lost, some are
still in existence. The fatigues of his long journeys, and the
excesses of all kinds in which he indulged, abridged the life of this
celebrated scholar, who died in A.D. 1037, at the age of fifty-six, at
Hamadan, where the following epitaph adorns his tomb: 'The great
philosopher, the great physician, Ibn Sina, is dead. His books on
philosophy have not taught him the art of living well, nor his books
on medicine the art of living long.'

A brief notice must be given of the celebrated physician and
philosopher, Ali bin Ridhwan, who died A.D. 1067. He was such a
prodigy of precocious learning that he began to lecture on medicine
and philosophy at Cairo from his fourteenth year. He afterwards also
taught astronomy. At the age of thirty-two he had attained a great
reputation as a physician, and was a rich man at sixty. He left more
than one hundred books which he had composed, and he himself says: 'I
made abridgments of the chief philosophical works of the ancients, and
left in this manner five books on philology; ten on law; the medical
works of Hippocrates and Galen; the book of plants of Dioskorides; the
books of Rufus, Paulus, Hawi, and Razi; four books on agriculture and
drugs; four books for instruction in the 'Almagest' of Ptolemy, and an
introduction to the study of it, and to the square of Ptolemy; as also
to the works of Plato, Alexander, Themistios, and Al-Farabi. I
purchased all these books, no matter what they cost, and preserved
them in chests, although it would have been more profitable to have
sold them again rather than have kept them.' Ibn Batlan, a clever
physician, was a contemporary of Ibn Ridhwan, and travelled from
Baghdad to Egypt only for the purpose of making his acquaintance, but
the result does not appear to have been satisfactory to either party.
He died A.D. 1063, leaving a number of works on medical and other
subjects.

Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali was b