The Book of Healing

Avicenna completes the main body of al-Shifāʾ in Isfahan

The Book of Healing is not a medical book — Avicenna's medical encyclopedia is the Canon.

What the 1027 date rests on

The best support for 1027 is an approximate completion chronology: Avicenna's students requested the encyclopedia at Hamadan in 1016, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy says he completed it in Isfahan by 1027.

The date does not represent modern publication. The work circulated as manuscripts, and no contemporary source describes a launch, a publisher or a single release day.

A seventeen-year job, repeatedly interrupted

Abu Ubayd al-Juzjani — student, amanuensis and biographer — had asked for a comprehensive treatment of the Aristotelian sciences, and he supplies the principal narrative of how the work was written. He reports a composition period of seventeen years, with interruptions.

Political upheaval, imprisonment, travel and the loss of portions during a campaign broke up the project. Avicenna finished the main body at the Isfahan court of the Kakuyid ruler Ala al-Dawla.

No autograph manuscript by Avicenna or Juzjani survives.

Where the claim of finality breaks

Reference works disagree about what 'completed' means here. Encyclopaedia Iranica, following Juzjani, says the books on plants and animals were written during a campaign probably in 1032, and that part of the zoology remained unfinished.

What was assembled was logic, natural philosophy, mathematics and metaphysics, gathered into a comprehensive Arabic philosophical summa that revised and expanded the Aristotelian curriculum.

Its modern Cairo edition occupies 22 large volumes.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 8 sources not yet audited Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~1027.

What the sources leave uncertain

Reference works disagree about what 'completed' means. The IEP says by 1027; Juzjani's chronology reported by Iranica places the plant and animal sections around 1032 and indicates that part of the zoology was never fully written.
'Published in 1027' imports a modern publishing concept into a manuscript culture and is not supported by a documented publication event.
No autograph manuscript by Avicenna or Juzjani survives.
The Latin label Sufficientia was applied to the work or parts of it in medieval transmission; it was not the title of a Latin edition issued in 1027.