1.
Shiraz
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Shiraz is the sixth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province. At the 2011 census, the population of the city was 1,700,665, Shiraz is located in the southwest of Iran on the Roodkhaneye Khoshk seasonal river. It has a climate and has been a regional trade center for over a thousand years. Shiraz is one of the oldest cities of ancient Persia, the earliest reference to the city, as Tiraziš, is on Elamite clay tablets dated to 2000 BC. In the 13th century, Shiraz became a center of the arts and letters, due to the encouragement of its ruler. It was the capital of Persia during the Zand dynasty from 1750 until 1800, two famous poets of Iran, Hafez and Saadi, are from Shiraz, whose tombs are on the north side of the current city boundaries. Shiraz is known as the city of poets, literature, wine and it is also considered by many Iranians to be the city of gardens, due to the many gardens and fruit trees that can be seen in the city, for example Eram Garden. Shiraz has had major Jewish and Christian communities, the crafts of Shiraz consist of inlaid mosaic work of triangular design, silver-ware, pile carpet-weaving and weaving of kilim, called gilim and jajim in the villages and among the tribes. In Shiraz industries such as cement production, sugar, fertilizers, textile products, wood products, metalwork, Shirāz also has a major oil refinery and is also a major center for Irans electronic industries, 53% of Irans electronic investment has been centered in Shiraz. Shiraz is home to Irans first solar power plant, recently the citys first wind turbine has been installed above Babakoohi mountain near the city. The earliest reference to the city is on Elamite clay tablets dated to 2000 BCE, found in June 1970, the tablets written in ancient Elamite name a city called Tiraziš. Phonetically, this is interpreted as /tiračis/ or /ćiračis/ and this name became Old Persian /širājiš/, through regular sound change comes the modern Persian name Shirāz. The name Shiraz also appears on clay sealings found at a 2nd-century CE Sassanid ruin, by some of the native writers, the name Shiraz has derived from a son of Tahmuras, the third Shāh of the world according to Ferdowsis Shāhnāma. Shiraz is most likely more than 4,000 years old, the name Shiraz is mentioned in cuneiform inscriptions from around 2000 BC found in southwestern corner of the city. According to some Iranian mythological traditions, it was erected by Tahmuras Diveband. The oldest sample of wine in the world, dating to approximately 7,000 years ago, was discovered on clay jars recovered outside of Shiraz, in the Achaemenian era, Shiraz was on the way from Susa to Persepolis and Pasargadae. In Ferdowsis Shāhnāma it has said that Artabanus V, the Parthian Emperor of Iran. Ghasre Abu-Nasr which is originally from Parthian era is situated in this area, during the Sassanid era, Shiraz was in between the way which was connecting Bishapur and Gur to Istakhr
2.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
3.
Akbar
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Abul-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad, popularly known as Akbar I and later Akbar the Great, was a Mughal Emperor from 1556 until his death. He was the ruler of the Mughal Dynasty in India. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, a strong personality and a successful general, Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include nearly all of the Indian Subcontinent north of the Godavari river. His power and influence, however, extended over the country because of Mughal military, political, cultural. To unify the vast Mughal state, Akbar established a system of administration throughout his empire and adopted a policy of conciliating conquered rulers through marriage. To preserve peace and order in a religiously and culturally diverse empire, Mughal India developed a strong and stable economy, leading to commercial expansion and greater patronage of culture. Akbar himself was a patron of art and culture, holy men of many faiths, poets, architects and artisans adorned his court from all over the world for study and discussion. Akbars courts at Delhi, Agra, and Fatehpur Sikri became centres of the arts, letters, perso-Islamic culture began to merge and blend with indigenous Indian elements, and a distinct Indo-Persian culture emerged characterised by Mughal style arts, painting, and architecture. A simple, monotheistic cult, tolerant in outlook, it centred on Akbar as a prophet, for which he drew the ire of the ulema, many of his courtiers followed Din-i-Ilahi as their religion as well, as many believed that Akbar was a prophet. One famous courtier who followed this religion was Birbal. Akbars reign significantly influenced the course of Indian history, during his rule, the Mughal empire tripled in size and wealth. He created a military system and instituted effective political and social reforms. By abolishing the tax on non-Muslims and appointing them to high civil and military posts, he was the first Mughal ruler to win the trust. He had Sanskrit literature translated, participated in festivals, realising that a stable empire depended on the co-operation. Thus, the foundations for an empire under Mughal rule was laid during his reign. Akbar was succeeded as emperor by his son, Jahangir, defeated in battles at Chausa and Kannauj in 1539–40 by the forces of Sher Shah Suri Mughal emperor Humayun fled westward to Sindh. There he met and married the then 14-year-old Hamida Banu Begum, daughter of Shaikh Ali Akbar Jami, a teacher of Humauyuns younger brother Hindal Mirza. Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar was born the year on 15 October 1542 at the Rajput Fortress of Umerkot in Sindh
4.
Persian literature
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Persian literature is one of the worlds oldest literatures. It spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the material has been lost. For instance, Mowlana Rumi, one of best-loved Persian poets, born in Balkh or Vakhsh, wrote in Persian, the Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the following the Islamic conquest of Iran c.650 CE. After the Abbasids came to power, the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic empire and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons——the early Iranian dynasties such as Tahirids and Samanids were based in Khorasan, Iranians wrote in both Persian and Arabic, Persian predominated in later literary circles. Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Sadi, Hafiz, Attar, Nezami, Rumi, very few literary works of Achaemenid Iran have survived, due partly to the destruction of the library at Persepolis. Most of what remains consists of the inscriptions of Achaemenid kings, particularly Darius I. Many Zoroastrian writings were destroyed in the Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century, the Parsis who fled to India, however, took with them some of the books of the Zoroastrian canon, including some of the Avesta and ancient commentaries thereof. Some works of Sassanid geography and travel also survived, albeit in Arabic translations, no single text devoted to literary criticism has survived from Pre-Islamic Iran. However, some essays in Pahlavi, such as Ayin-e name nebeshtan, some researchers have quoted the Shoubiyye as asserting that the Pre-Islamic Iranians had books on eloquence, such as Karvand. No trace remains of such books, there are some indications that some among the Persian elite were familiar with Greek rhetoric and literary criticism. While initially overshadowed by Arabic during the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates, New Persian soon became a literary language again of the Central Asian, in short, the ability to write in verse form was a pre-requisite for any scholar. For example, almost half of Avicennas medical writings are in verse, works of the early era of Persian poetry are characterized by strong court patronage, an extravagance of panegyrics, and what is known as سبک فاخر exalted in style. The tradition of patronage began perhaps under the Sassanid era. The Qasida was perhaps the most famous form of panegyric used, khorasani style, whose followers mostly were associated with Greater Khorasan, is characterized by its supercilious diction, dignified tone, and relatively literate language. The chief representatives of this lyricism are Asjadi, Farrukhi Sistani, Unsuri, panegyric masters such as Rudaki were known for their love of nature, their verse abounding with evocative descriptions
5.
Behistun Inscription
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The Behistun Inscription is a multilingual inscription and large rock relief on a cliff at Mount Behistun in the Kermanshah Province of Iran, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran. It was crucial to the decipherment of cuneiform script, Darius the Great proclaimed himself victorious in all battles during the period of upheaval, attributing his success to the grace of Ahura Mazda. The inscription includes three versions of the text, written in three different cuneiform script languages, Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. The inscription is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptian hieroglyphs, the inscription is approximately 15 metres high by 25 metres wide and 100 metres up a limestone cliff from an ancient road connecting the capitals of Babylonia and Media. The Old Persian text contains 414 lines in five columns, the Elamite text includes 593 lines in eight columns, and the Babylonian text is in 112 lines. The inscription was illustrated by a life-sized bas-relief of Darius I, the supine figure is reputed to be the pretender Gaumata. Darius is attended to the left by two servants, and nine one-meter figures stand to the right, with hands tied and rope around their necks, faravahar floats above, giving his blessing to the king. One figure appears to have been added after the others were completed, as was Dariuss beard, the inscription is mentioned by Ctesias of Cnidus, who noted its existence some time around 400 BC and mentioned a well and a garden beneath the inscription. He incorrectly concluded that the inscription had been dedicated by Queen Semiramis of Babylon to Zeus, tacitus also mentions it and includes a description of some of the long-lost ancillary monuments at the base of the cliff, including an altar to Herakles. What has been recovered of them, including a dedicated in 148 BC, is consistent with Tacituss description. Diodorus also writes of Bagistanon and claims it was inscribed by Semiramis. A legend began around Mount Behistun, as written about by the Persian poet and writer Ferdowsi in his Shahnameh c. 1000, about a man named Farhad, who was a lover of King Khosrows wife, Shirin. The legend states that, exiled for his transgression, Farhad was given the task of cutting away the mountain to find water, if he succeeded, he would be given permission to marry Shirin. After many years and the removal of half the mountain, he did find water and he went mad, threw his axe down the hill, kissed the ground and died. It is told in the book of Khosrow and Shirin that his axe was made out of a tree, and, where he threw the axe. Shirin was not dead, according to the story, and mourned upon hearing the news, in 1598, the Englishman Robert Sherley saw the inscription during a diplomatic mission to Persia on behalf of Austria, and brought it to the attention of Western European scholars. His party incorrectly came to the conclusion that it was Christian in origin, french General Gardanne thought it showed Christ and his twelve apostles, and Sir Robert Ker Porter thought it represented the Lost Tribes of Israel and Shalmaneser of Assyria. Italian explorer Pietro della Valle visited the inscription in the course of a pilgrimage in around 1621, German surveyor Carsten Niebuhr visited in around 1764 for Frederick V of Denmark, publishing a copy of the inscription in the account of his journeys in 1778
6.
Van Fortress
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The Fortress of Van is a massive stone fortification built by the ancient kingdom of Urartu during the 9th to 7th centuries BC, and is the largest example of its kind. It overlooks the ruins of Tushpa the ancient Urartian capital during the 9th century which was centered upon the bluff where the fortress now sits. A number of fortifications were built throughout the Urartian kingdom, usually cut into hillsides and outcrops in places where modern-day Armenia, Turkey. The ancient fortress is located just west of Van and east of Lake Van in the Van Province of Turkey, the lower parts of the walls of Van Citadel were constructed of unmortared basalt, while the rest was built from mud-bricks. Such fortresses were used for control, rather than as a defense against foreign armies. The ruins of this fortress sit outside the city of Van. A stereotyped trilingual inscription of Xerxes the Great from the 5th century BC is inscribed upon a section of the rock face. The niche was carved out by Xerxes father King Darius. The inscription survives in perfect condition and is divided into three columns of 27 lines written in Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. It is the only known Achaemenid royal inscription located outside of Iran, other cuneiform inscriptions are typically off limits unless to large tour groups. Burnoufs reading of the Van trilingual inscription had made a significant contribution to the deciphering of Old Persian cuneiform, silva Tipple New Lake led an American expedition to the ruins in 1938-40. Cuneiform Inscription at Van Extensive picture site of the Kale area and the old town
7.
Ka'ba-ye Zartosht
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Kaba-ye Zartosht is the name of a stone quadrangular and stepped structure in the Naqsh-e Rustam compound beside Zangiabad village in Marvdasht county in Fars, Iran. The Naqsh-e Rustam compound incorporates memorials of the Elamites, the Achaemenids, the distance of Kaba-ye Zartosht from the mountain is 46 meters and is situated exactly opposite Darius IIs mausoleum and is rectangular and has only one entrance door. The material of the structure is white limestone, it is about 12 meters high that becomes 14.12 meters including the stairs. Its entrance door leads to the chamber inside by a thirty-stair stony stairway, also, other theories like a temple for the goddess Anahita or a solar calendar have been mentioned, but been less noticed. Three inscriptions have been written in the three languages Sassanian Middle Persian, Arsacid Middle Persian and Greek on the Northern, Southern and Eastern walls of the tower in the Sassanian era. The Kaba-ye Zartosht building is a beautiful structure considering the proportion of the sizes, the lines, currently, the structure is part of the Naqsh-e Rustam compound and possessed by the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization of Iran. Alireza Shapur Shahbazi believes that the phrase Kaba-ye Zartosht is new and non-scientific and this does not mean that the place has been Zoroasters mausoleum and there is also no report of the pilgrims travels there for pilgrimage. Act as the best way you see suitable that will delight our gods, there is no more knowledge of the name of the structure in earlier periods. Ibn al-Balkhi has mentioned the name of the area of Naqsh-e Rustam, the word Dezhnebesht or Dezhkatibehs might have been used for the structure Kaba-ye Zartosht. The structure of Kaba-ye Zartosht is a cuboid and has one entrance door that leads inside its chamber by a stairway made of stone. The sizes of the stones vary from 2.90 *2.10 *0.48 to 1.10 *1.08 *0.56 meters, however in the west wall, four large rectangular pieces of stone cover the ceiling with an eastern-western axis. Each of those stones are 7.30 meters long and are sewn to each other by dovetail joints, wherever there was an error or flaw in the main stone, the part was removed and filled with delicate joints, some of which still remain. The structure stands on a platform, and the first stair is 27 centimeters above the main floor below. The base of the structure is square-shaped, with each side approximately 7.30 meters long, the ceiling of the structure is smooth and flat inwards, but has a bilateral slope outside that begins from the line in the middle of the rooftop. The door led to a room that is quadrangular and has an area of 3. 74*3.72 meters and is 5.5 meters high with the thicknesses of its walls between 1.54 and 1.62 meters. The dovetail joints belong mostly to Darius I and Xerxes Is periods, and the style of aligning the stones is related to the primary structures of Persepolis. The entrance door and doorway of the structure is like the doors and doorways of the Achaemenid shahs mausoleums. The style of placing the stones that lacks mortar and order, especially, the inscription in the lower part of the southern wall of Persepolis is almost the sizes of the stones placed on the ceiling of Kaba-ye Zartosht
8.
Rudaki
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Rudaki composed poems in the New Persian alphabet and is considered a founder of classical Persian literature. His poetry contains many of the oldest genres of Persian poetry including the quatrain, however, rudakis Nahr and Ayn, Khing- but and Surkhbut, and Wamiq and Azra have prospered on the riches of the oral tradition of folklores. Rudaki was born in 858 in Rudak, a located in the Samanid Empire which is now Panjakent. Even though most of his biographers assert that he was completely blind and his accurate knowledge and description of colors, as evident in his poetry, renders this assertion very doubtful. He was the poet to the Samanid ruler Nasr II in Bukhara, although he eventually fell out of favour. Early in his life, the fame of his accomplishments reached the ear of the Samanid Nasr II ibn Ahmad, the ruler of Khorasan and Transoxiana, Rudaki became his daily companion, amassed great wealth, and become highly honored. He was also very adept singer and instrumentalist, the common opinion was that Rudaki was born blind or was blind from his childhood. However, some of early biographies, like Samani and Nezami Aruzi do not emphasis his blindness as natural-born, ferdowsi just mentions in his Shahnameh that they recited Kelileh o Demneh to him and he rendered it into poem. Also using some of his poems we can see that he had sight, The contemporary Iranian scholar, Said Nafisi, has a book about Rudaki called Biography, Environment and Time of Rudaki. This revolt led to the overthrow of the Samanid king and Rudaki, as his companion, was tortured and blinded. After this, Rudaki went back to the town where he was born. Of the 1,300,000 verses attributed to him, only 52 qasidas, ghazals and rubais survived, numerous fragments, however, are preserved in the Persian lexicon of Asadi Tusi. Paul Horn, Geschichte der persischen Literatur, p.73 E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, i. C. J. Pickering, A Persian Chaucer in National Review. More recently, in 1963, Saʻīd Nafīsī identified more fragments to be attributed to Rudaki and has assembled them, together with an extensive biography, sample Poetry, Look at the cloud, how it cries like a grieving man Thunder moans like a lover with a broken heart. Now and then the sun peeks from behind the clouds Like a prisoner hiding from the guard, for the 1100th anniversary of his birth, the Iranian government published a series of stamps showing his picture. An international seminar was held at Vahdat Hall, Tehran, Iran on 21 December 2008, to mark his 1150th birth anniversary, with President Ahmadinejad, in this seminar, Rudaki was celebrated as the father of the Modern Persian literature. ISBN 0-7007-0406-X Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, ISBN 90-277-0143-1 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Rūdagī. Sassan Tabatabai, Father of Persian Verse, Rudaki and His Poetry, Amsterdam University Press, Rudaki, Abu Abd Allah, a biography by Professor Iraj Bashiri, University of Minnesota
9.
Ferdowsi
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Abu ʾl-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi, or Ferdowsi was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh, which is the worlds longest epic poem created by a single poet, and the national epic of Greater Iran. Ferdowsi is celebrated as the most influential figure in Persian literature and he was called The Lord of the Word and The Savior of Persian Language. Except for his kunya and his laqab, nothing is known with any certainty about his full name, from an early period on, he has been referred to by different additional names and titles, the most common one being حکیم / Ḥakīm. Based on this, his name is given in Persian sources as حکیم ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی / Ḥakīm Abul-Qāsim Firdowsī Țusī. Due to the transliteration from Persian into English, different spellings of his name are used in English works, including Firdawsi, Firdusi, Firdosi, Firdausi. The Encyclopaedia of Islam uses the spelling Firdawsī, based on the transliteration method of the German Oriental Society. The Encyclopædia Iranica, which uses a version of the same method. In both cases, the -ow and -aw are to be pronounced as a diphthong, reflecting the original Arabic, the modern Tajik transliteration of his name in Cyrillic script is Ҳаким Абулқосим Фирдавсӣ Тӯсӣ. Little is known about Ferdowsis early life, the poet had a wife, who was probably literate and came from the same dehqan class. He had a son, who died aged 37, and was mourned by the poet in an elegy which he inserted into the Shahnameh, Ferdowsi belonged to the class of dehqans. The dehqans were intensely patriotic and saw it as their task to preserve the traditions of Iran. By the late 9th century, the power of the caliphate had weakened, Ferdowsi grew up in Tus, a city under the control of one of these dynasties, the Samanids, who claimed descent from the Sassanid general Bahram Chobin. Abu Mansur Muhammad, a dehqan and governor of Tus, had ordered his minister Abu Mansur Mamari to invite several local scholars to compile a prose Shahnameh, although it no longer survives, Ferdowsi used it as one of the sources of his epic. Samanid rulers were patrons of such important Persian poets as Rudaki, Ferdowsi followed in the footsteps of these writers. Details about Ferdowsis education are lacking, judging by the Shahnameh, there is no evidence he knew either Arabic or Pahlavi. Although New Persian was permeated by Arabic vocabulary by Ferdowsis time and this may have been a deliberate strategy by the poet. It is possible that Ferdowsi wrote some poems which have not survived. He began work on the Shahnameh around 977, intending it as a continuation of the work of his fellow poet Daqiqi, like Daqiqi, Ferdowsi employed the prose Shahnameh of ʿAbd-al-Razzāq as a source
10.
Avicenna
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Avicenna or Ibn Sīnā was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age. Of the 450 works he is known to have written, around 240 have survived, in 1973, Avicennas Canon Of Medicine was reprinted in New York. Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicennas corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics and poetry. Avicenna is a Latin corruption of the Arabic patronym Ibn Sīnā, meaning Son of Sina, however, Avicenna was not the son, but the great-great-grandson of a man named Sina. His full name was Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Sīnā, Ibn Sina created an extensive corpus of works during what is commonly known as the Islamic Golden Age, in which the translations of Greco-Roman, Persian, and Indian texts were studied extensively. Under the Samanids, Bukhara rivaled Baghdad as a capital of the Islamic world. The study of the Quran and the Hadith thrived in such a scholarly atmosphere, philosophy, Fiqh and theology were further developed, most noticeably by Avicenna and his opponents. Al-Razi and Al-Farabi had provided methodology and knowledge in medicine and philosophy, Avicenna had access to the great libraries of Balkh, Khwarezm, Gorgan, Rey, Isfahan and Hamadan. Various texts show that he debated philosophical points with the greatest scholars of the time, aruzi Samarqandi describes how before Avicenna left Khwarezm he had met Al-Biruni, Abu Nasr Iraqi, Abu Sahl Masihi and Abu al-Khayr Khammar. Avicenna was born c. 980 in Afshana, a village near Bukhara, the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Setareh, was from Bukhara, his father, Abdullah, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh and his father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had learned all of them. According to his autobiography, Avicenna had memorised the entire Quran by the age of 10 and he learned Indian arithmetic from an Indian greengrocer, ءMahmoud Massahi and he began to learn more from a wandering scholar who gained a livelihood by curing the sick and teaching the young. He also studied Fiqh under the Sunni Hanafi scholar Ismail al-Zahid, Avicenna was taught some extent of philosophy books such as Introduction s Porphyry, Euclids Elements, Ptolemys Almagest by an unpopular philosopher, Abu Abdullah Nateli, who claimed philosophizing. As a teenager, he was troubled by the Metaphysics of Aristotle. For the next year and a half, he studied philosophy, in such moments of baffled inquiry, he would leave his books, perform the requisite ablutions, then go to the mosque, and continue in prayer till light broke on his difficulties. Deep into the night, he would continue his studies, and even in his dreams problems would pursue him and work out their solution
