The first fact about Avicenna is a source limit. The richest Arabic is medieval and court-made; the richest dates a modern catalog can store without inventing an eleventh-century timestamp are later: Latin incunables, a Medicean Arabic press, English Book I, library catalogues, a Princeton faculty study, UNESCO files, and a Hamadan museum-tomb. Treating the Canon as a tape of 1025 is naive. Treating Avicennian medicine as only later abuse is evasive.
Gruner’s 1930 Canon Book I, scanned at https://archive.org/details/AvicennasCanonOfMedicine (opens in a new tab) , prints venesection, evacuation, and humoral crisis as ordinary therapy. The same physiology can be cited against preventive inoculation. Siraisi’s 1987 Princeton monograph at https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691601441/avicenna-in-renaissance-italy (opens in a new tab) documents Italian faculties that locked the Latin Canon into lectures and examinations, a teaching monopoly that crowded rival anatomy and chemistry. CERL’s ISTC at https://data.cerl.org/istc/ia01417700 (opens in a new tab) and https://data.cerl.org/istc/ia01418000 (opens in a new tab) shows how expensive those folios were. UNESCO’s 2005 Memory of the World file at https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/medieval-manuscripts-medicine-and-pharmacy (opens in a new tab) lists Book II pharmacy manuscripts; a listed simple can be copied as a living recipe, including contested minerals. Gohlman’s 1974 Life at https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Life-of-Ibn-Sina (opens in a new tab) prints a court physician’s household, patrons, imprisonments, and unfree surround. Stanford’s Ibn Sina entry, first published 15 September 2016 at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ibn-sina/ (opens in a new tab) , with https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ibn-sina-metaphysics/ (opens in a new tab) and https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/ (opens in a new tab) , prints prophet-legislator politics and the later Avicennism-kalam polarisation.
The offsets are also dated. The 12 February 1473 Milan Latin Canon and the 1476 Padua Herbort folio put the encyclopedia into type. The 1593 Typographia Medicea Arabic, now at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/n94uwhrk (opens in a new tab) , is industrial policy for a scientific book. Wellcome MS Arabic 155 at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/wuwth5sx (opens in a new tab) is a complete 1632 Isfahan copy in a public-domain library. NLM’s 1994 exhibition page at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/islamic_medical/islamic_07.html (opens in a new tab) and the exhibition home at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/islamic_medical/islamic_00.html (opens in a new tab) teach the Canon as history of medicine, including a complete Arabic witness. The James Lind Library at https://www.jameslindlibrary.org/articles/ibn-sinas-canon-of-medicine-11th-century-rules-for-assessing-the-effects-of-drugs/ (opens in a new tab) and the PMC twin at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2642865/ (opens in a new tab) print drug-assessment rules as an observational method heading. Van Riet’s Avicenna Latinus, from 1968, at https://brill.com/display/serial/ALAT (opens in a new tab) , is a critical-Latin factory. The 1954 Hamadan mausoleum-museum, as presented at https://www.visitiran.ir/en/attraction/tomb-of-avicenna (opens in a new tab) and in UNESCO’s 2004 ethics volume at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000134475 (opens in a new tab) , is a public knowledge monument. The 2003 UNESCO Avicenna Prize at https://www.unesco.org/en/prizes/avicenna-prize-science-ethics (opens in a new tab) is an intergovernmental ethics instrument. Britannica at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Avicenna (opens in a new tab) and Iranica at https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/avicenna-index (opens in a new tab) independently frame the identity. The Met Heilbrunn book-arts essay at https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/book/hd_book.htm (opens in a new tab) opens the manuscript culture that carried the name.
What the score must not say: that Avicenna signed a 1473 colophon; that 1987 Siraisi is a 1025 lecture; that drug-testing rules are the Declaration of Helsinki; that venesection is only ‘of its time’ and therefore not a Fact; that a UNESCO prize washes depletion; that a unique modern casualty series can be back-dated without a measured argument. Complex contribution is the honest type. Confidence is high on 1473–2005 printings, catalogues, and agency acts, medium on later coefficients from humoral therapy onto any one clinic, low on reconstructing lost personal case-notes as a register.
1930 English is not 1025. 1473 is a printer. 1593 is a Medicean press. 2003 is UNESCO. Off-family indicator padding is refused. Related people are Greek medical ancestors, court patrons, Andalusian and Latin interlocutors, and later health-office holders who inherit a faculty vocabulary. They will be created as identities where missing.
The useful question is not whether Ibn Sina is the prince of physicians. It is which dated later instruments still move faculties, pharmacies, rights, and commemorations, and how much of that movement can be attributed to a Persian court name without invention.