Avicenna-Pioneer of the Renaissance

The Renaissance was a time in European history when art, science, and technological advances culminated in a movement larger than any seen before. Until this point, literature and higher learning were limited by one’s economical standing in society and only a selected few (clergy, nobles) could read and write. The changes in society precipitated by the Renaissance gradually made education open to more than just the elite, which led to a rapid advancement in new inventions, schools of thought, and an appreciation of the past. Although the Renaissance took place in Western Europe, it was initiated and influenced by influences outside of that area. Trade to Europe from Asia and the Middle East brought in new ideas and inventions, like gunpowder from China and medicine from the Muslim world.
 The Renaissance that most people are aware of was actually the second of two, the first occurring in the twelfth century and the second taking place in the fifteenth century. The latter, the Italian Renaissance was focused on relearning from classical Greek and Latin literature and progressing those ideas to make something new. The earlier Renaissance also focused on relearning lost knowledge from the classical era, but was based in the Hanseatic League cities of northern Europe. These cities became rich by trading with the Muslim world and other cities in Europe. In addition to becoming monetarily rich by trading with cultures outside of Europe, the merchants also picked up much valuable knowledge.  
 Knowledge and literature from the classical Greek and Roman cultures had been mostly lost to the Europeans for centuries if not a millennia by the time they rediscovered Arabic translations through trading. While the Europeans had lost most of their predecessors knowledge through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, the Arabs and Persians had not only retained copies of works by such classical writers like Aristotle, they improved upon them.  
 This knowledge of the past gave the Muslims a significant advantage in science and medicine over their Christian counterparts for many centuries. Peaceful contact with the Muslims after the Crusades gave the Europeans the chance to translate and study Classical and Islamic literature. This influx in “new” knowledge led to the boom of thinking known in Europe as the Renaissance.
 Although it would be another two hundred and fifty years until a multi-specialized savant like Leonardo da Vinci would come around, the Christian scholars of the first Renaissance were actually learning from text books written by exactly such a man. Four hundred years before the time of da Vinci lived Avicenna, a Persian physician and philosopher whose talents were far wider than just those two fields. Avicenna combined the knowledge of past Greek and Latin discoveries in medicine, science, and philosophy with independent Arab and Persian studies in those fields, and wrote over 450 treatises on them. Discoveries credited to him are many, including the contagious nature of diseases, the importance of dietetics, evidence based medicine, the invention of steam distillation, and the law of superposition in geology.
Avicenna is an under-rated figure whose importance to both Renaissance movements is unparalleled. Not only did he revolutionize the way people think, Avicenna actually created new fields of science, and is considered the father of geology and momentum in physics. His importance to the turn of events that led to the European Renaissance is highlighted by the fact that Europeans were still using translations of his textbooks up to six hundred years after he wrote them. In a way Avicenna and his contemporaries can be considered to have been a part of their own Renaissance, albeit earlier than the European one.