Abu Ali ibn Sina (980–1037), known in the West as Avicenna, was a physician, philosopher and polymath whose youth was spent in Bukhara at the Samanid court. By eighteen he was already a recognised doctor with access to the palace's vast library. His "Canon of Medicine" remained the leading medical textbook for six centuries, both in the Islamic world and in the universities of Europe. In all, more than two hundred works on medicine, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy are attributed to him.