primarily on Avicenna’s philosophical system as it appears in his most extensiveand  well-known  encyclopedic  work,  the Cure (ash-Shif  ),  albeit  in  places drawing    significantly    on    his    other    extant    encyclopedias—particularlythe Salvation(an-Naj t), and to a lesser extent Pointers and Reminders (al-Ish r twa-t-tanb h t)    as    well    as    his Canon    of    Medicine (Q n n f   - ibb).Unfortunately, this meant that I gave rather short shrift to Avicenna’s shorterspecialized treatises as well as his Discussions (Mub   ath t) and Glosses (Ta l q t), even though I recognize that these works frequently have a more fully developed presentation of certain technical and tricky points. Also because of this self-imposed limit,  I  have  thought  it  prudent  not  to  take  up  the  issue  of intellectual development, not because I deny that it occurred or that it is not important, but because in the end I think that presenting a roughly unified Avicennan system of thought as it is appears predominantly in the Cure will be more useful for those readers who are interested primarily in getting some initial sense of Avicenna’s overall philosophy as well as providing a starting point forscholars who want to explore systematic developments in his thought.