Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/184

 only say that Ibn Sina was the first important writer who illustrates this tendency.

Called to exercise his medical skill at the court of Nuh b. Mansur, the Samanid governor of Khurasan, he enjoyed that prince's favour, and in his library studied many works of Aristotle hitherto unknown to his contemporaries, and when that library was burned he was regarded as the sole transmitter of the doctrines contained in those books. This represents contemporary Arabic opinion about him: there is no evidence in his existing writings that he had access to Aristotelian material other than that generally known to the Syriac and Arabic writers. When the affairs of the Samanid dynasty fell into disorder Ibn Sina removed to Khwarazan, where he, with several other scholars, enjoyed the enlightened patronage of the Ma'muni Emir. But this Emir was living a somewhat precarious existence in the neighbourhood of the Turkish Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, the stern champion of orthodoxy and the conqueror of India. It was obvious that the Sultan coveted the Emir's dominions, and that when he chose to seize them it would be impossible to resist; he actually did take them in 408. Meanwhile the Sultan was treated with the utmost deference by the Emir and such of his neighbours as were allowed to live on sufferance. Mahmud wished to be distinguished as a patron of learning, and "invited" scholars to his court—in plain words, he kidnapped scholars and took care that they never afterwards transgressed the strictest