te ablutions, then hie
to the mosque, and continue in prayer till light broke on his difficulties.
Deep into the night he would continue his studies, stimulating his senses
by occasional cups of wine, and even in his dreams problems would pursue
him and work out their solution. Forty times, it is said, he read through
the _Metaphysics_ of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his
memory; but their meaning was hopelessly obscure, until one day they found
illumination from the little commentary by F[=a]r[=a]b[=i] (_q.v._), which
he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three dirhems. So great was
his joy at the discovery, thus made by help of a work from which he had
expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and
bestowed an alms upon the poor. Thus, by the end of his seventeenth year
his apprenticeship of study was concluded, and he went forth to find a
market for his accomplishments.

His first appointment was that of physician to the amir, who owed him his
recovery from a dangerous illness (997). Avicenna's chief reward for this
service was access to the royal library of the Samanids (_q.v._),
well-known patrons of scholarship and scholars. When the library was
destroyed by fire not long after, the enemies of Avicenna accused him of
burning it, in order for ever to conceal the sources of his knowledge.
Meanwhile, he assisted his father in his financial labours, but still found
time to write some of his earliest works.

At the age of twenty-two Avicenna lost his father. The Samanid dynasty came
to its end in December 1004. Avicenna seems to have declined the offers of
Mahm[=u]d the Ghaznevid, and proceeded westwards to Urjensh in the modern
Khiva, where the vizier, regarded as a friend of scholars, gave him a small
monthly stipend. But the pay was small, and Avicenna wandered from place to
place through the districts of Nishapur and Merv to the borders of
Khorasan, seeking an opening for his talents. Shams al-Ma'[=a]l[=i]
Q[=a]b[=u]s, the generous ruler of Dailam, himself a poet and a scholar,
with whom he had expected to find an asylum, was about that date (1012)
starved to death by his own revolted soldiery. Avicenna himself was at this
season stricken down by a severe illness. Finally, at Jorj[=a]n, near the
Caspian, he met with a friend, who bought near his own house a dwelling in
which Avicenna lectured on logic and astronomy. For this patron several of
his treatises were written; a