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Hello in the city of Hamadan in Iran, right in the center, there's a vast mausoleum dedicated

to an Iranian national hero.

Built in 1952 exactly 915 years after his death.

It's a high conical tower with 12 supporting columns.

It's dedicated not to a warrior or a king,

but to a philosopher and physician.

His name is Abu Ali al-Husain even sina but is also known as

Avicena and is arguably the most important philosopher in the history of Islam.

With me to discuss Avicana, his world, his ideas and his influence on the way both Muslims and Christians think,

an influence which continued for centuries, a Peter Adamson, reader in philosophy at Kings College London,

Amira Benison, senior lecture in Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge,

and Nada El Bisury, affiliated lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science, also at the University of Cambridge. Pitt Adamson, we know a great deal about Avicana's life from his autobiography.

It was, it seems, finished by his pupil.

He was born in 1980 in Central Asia, and can you go on from there?

Yeah, so the biography and autobiography is a very useful text for Avicenna.

So not only do we learn a lot about his life from that, but we learn a lot about what he was like as a person,

partially because we have his own words telling us what he was like.

So I think that there are two things that really come out of that autobiography. One is that he was

immensely pleased with himself and the other which is rather connected to this is his

kind of independence and originality with respect to the tradition that came down to him.

...