- Lived:
- c. 854–925 CE (some sources say 865–925) · Rayy, near modern Tehran, and Baghdad
- Tradition:
- Islamic Golden Age; physician-philosopher and radical rationalist — medieval Islam's boldest freethinker
- The Big Idea:
- God gave reason to everyone, in full measure — enough to find truth, cure disease, and heal the soul without any privileged authority standing in between.
- In their words:
- "The Creator gave us reason so that through it we might gain everything that lifts us up and betters our lives... We must never let passion trample it, for passion is reason's blight." (from the opening of the Spiritual Medicine)
- If you remember one thing:
- He was the greatest doctor of his age — and when he turned the same fearless, evidence-first habit of mind on religion itself, his civilization kept the doctor and buried the philosopher.