The Book of Healing

Al-Shifa' ("The Cure") is Avicenna's great philosophical encyclopedia, covering logic, natural philosophy and metaphysics; Ibn Khallikan lists it among Ibn Sina's works alongside al-Najat, al-Isharat and al-Qanun, in an output approaching a hundred long and short treatises ¹.

Hasan Ibrahim Hasan, citing Ibn Khallikan, calls Ibn Sina the prodigy of his age in learning, intellect and authorship, naming al-Shifa' on hikma together with al-Najat, al-Isharat and al-Qanun among nearly a hundred works ¹. In the same chapter he notes that Ibn Sina wrote on logic following the lead of Abu Nasr al-Farabi, for whom logic was the gateway to philosophy ².

• Cited from Hasan Ibrahim Hasan's Tarikh al-Islam (cultural volume, first Abbasid age), pp. 392-393, quoting Ibn Khallikan 2/152-153; a description of the book's sections and volumes needs a specialist source (the Fihrist or the Shifa's own introduction) before it is added.