The author, whose name was Abu Ali el Hosein, was born in Bokhara, about the year 980 A.D., of a Persian father and a Bokhara mother. He was educated among the great scholars who at that period made Bokhara famous as a centre of learning. At a very early age he had mastered mathematics, logic, theology, and medicine. Before he was sixteen he was familiar with all the medical theories of that time, and by gratuitous attendance upon the sick had discovered new methods of treatment. He developed remarkable genius in botanizing and in extracting the medicinal properties from plants, in which he was assisted, according to the popular idea, by supernatural agencies. When he was seventeen years old he was famous throughout the khanate of Bokhara, and was appointed official physician to the emir, who owed him his recovery from a dangerous illness. This appointment gave Avicenna, as he was known, leisure to study, means to purchase books that he required, and access to a library which was filled with important manuscripts on scientific and other subjects.

When he was twenty-two years old, Avicenna left Bokhara and proceeded westward to Merv, Khiva, and other centres of learning, where he remained for a few years, and then went over into Persia, where he settled at Rai, the birthplace of Zoroaster, in the vicinity of modern Teheran. There Avicenna remained the greater part of his life, prosecuting his studies, teaching medicine, and writing books. He received generous support from the emir, although at times he was subject to persecution and various annoyances. The last twelve years of his life were spent as physician and scientific adviser to the emir of Ispaha.

It appears that Avicenna, like many other wise and great men, did not practise what he preached, but at intervals indulged in excessive sensual pleasures and dissipation, which ruined his health, and he died in June, 1037, at the age of fifty-eight, at the city of Hamaden, Persia, and was buried among the palm trees in the park that surrounds the palace.

He wrote more than one hundred treatises. Some of them are pamphlets of a few pages; others extend through several volumes, and they covered the entire range of scientific and intellectual activity at that age of the world, from astronomy to zoölogy. His greatest work, entitled “The Canons of Medicine,” that which was shown me by the librarian at St. Sophia, for six centuries was the highest authority upon medical subjects throughout the civilized world. Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century it was used as a text book in most of the European universities, and even now lecturers in the most famous medical schools frequently refer to the discoveries and theories of Avicenna with profound respect.

In the Middle Ages manuscript copies of this book were sought for the libraries of kings as well as scientists, and no library was complete without his works on metaphysics, mathematics, alchemy, logic, botany, and philosophy. Avicenna ranks among Moslem scholars as Aristotle or Plato ranks among the Greeks. For six hundred years he was entitled to his surname of “Prince of Physicians.” In the mediæval world he ranked equally high as a philosopher and astronomer. His writings have been discussed and elucidated by hundreds of commentators in every one of the civilized nations.

And so he continued to discuss his treasures, as fast as his tongue could waggle, and he would not let us go without explaining his views on the doctrine of the atonement as taught by the Christian missionaries in Turkey. He did not know whether Christian theologians in other parts of the world were guilty of the same folly, but the American missionaries in Turkey were teaching the people that they could be saved and go to heaven, no matter how many sins they committed, provided they repented of those sins before they died. “This,” the old gentleman declared, “is such a pernicious doctrine that I am surprised that the government does not prohibit the missionaries from teaching it. Anyone must see what it would lead to; for if this missionary theory is correct, it simply offers an inducement for men to sin. And then, when they get old, and do not care to sin any more, it is only necessary for them to say that they are sorry and they will be forgiven and taken back into the fold and have just as high a place in heaven as those who have been good and pious all their lives.”

CHAPTER XIX
THE EMANCIPATION OF TURKISH WOMEN

The emancipation of Turkish women is not complete, but has advanced with remarkable speed. The restrictions which have kept them in seclusion and ignorance have already been very largely removed. No single reform that has followed the change of government has been more radical or complete. Upon the retail trading streets of Pera, the foreign section of Constantinople, you can see thousands of unveiled Turkish women any afternoon and thousands more of women whose veils are thrust aside so that their physical and mental visions are clear, and they can look a man in the face without a blush of embarrassment or shame. In Stamboul, which is almost exclusively of native inhabitants, the innovation is not so general, but a stranger would scarcely notice the difference. In other Turkish cities the same change has taken place. Half the women of the empire wear veils now simply as a matter of habit instead of preference. The majority of them wear the thinnest sort of gauze in place of the impenetrable yashmak that they were compelled to draw over their faces before the constitution. Indeed, the average veil worn by the women of Turkey to-day does not conceal their eyes or their features any more than the dotted stuff affected by the fashionable women of the European cities and the United States.

This gossamer stuff is also in the nature of a compromise, rather than a mask. During the first weeks that followed the revolution of July, 1908, nearly every woman drew off her veil and many participated in the political demonstrations, as the women of Paris did in the riots of the commune. And I was told that throughout the day and the evening the windows of the residences were filled with unveiled faces, which looked without embarrassment upon the people who were passing by. To-day women who drive about in carriages discard the veil altogether; even the inmates of the imperial harem, which, however, is not so radical a change as would appear, because the new sultan is perhaps the most liberal man in all Turkey. So many Turkish women were imprudent in their behaviour immediately after the revolution that the thoughtful ones called a halt and resumed their veils as a protest against the indelicate and unwomanly demeanour of some of their sex. The minister of police issued an official communication, with the approval of the leaders of the Young Turk party, requesting women not to go into the streets with their faces uncovered, and the managers of theatres were forbidden to admit women to their performances. But such things usually adjust themselves in time, and the experience of two years has resulted in a sort of compromise, by which sensible women still wear veils, but cover their faces only when necessary to protect themselves against masculine insolence.