Statement by H.E. Ambassador Ali BAHREINI before the Abu Ali Sina Conference
The Joint International Scientific Conference with the Missions of Tajikistan and Afghanistan
Opening Statement
by
H.E. Ambassador Ali BAHREINI
Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations in Geneva
before
The Joint International Scientific Conference with the Missions of Tajikistan and Afghanistan
“Abu Ali Sina and his Contribution to the Formation of New Scientific World View”
Geneva, 12 November 2026
*****
بسم الله الرحمن الرحیم
Fellow colleagues, Madam Director General Valovaya,
Distinguished guests,
There are figures in history who do not merely belong to their age; they illuminate every age that follows. One such figure is Abu Ali al-Hossein ibn Sina—known to the world as Avicenna. Born near Bukhara in 980 and departing this life in the city of Hamadan in 1037, he lived only fifty-57 years. Yet in that brief span he composed between roughly two hundred and fifty and four hundred and fifty works, spanning medicine, philosophy, logic, mathematics, astronomy, and the very nature of the human soul. He was, as one of our archival sources so fittingly names him, “the Genius of the Medical World” and “the Sun That Never Sets.”
Like a radiant sun rising from the East, Ibn Sina cast his light across continents and centuries. The warmth of his intellect and the brilliance of his knowledge became a permanent gift to human civilization—a gift that shaped university curricula from Córdoba to Oxford, from Cairo to Paris. For more than six hundred years, his Canon of Medicine stood as the standard textbook of European medical schools. His Shifāʾ, or the Book of Healing, reconciled the logic of Aristotle with the spiritual insights of Islamic thought, earning him the title al-Shaykh al-Raʾīs, the chief master of his age. Yet for all this greatness, Ibn Sina remained profoundly humble. In a celebrated rubāʿī attributed to him, he wrote:
دل گرچه در این بادیه بسیار شتافت
یک موی ندانست ولی موی شکافت
اندر دل من هزار خورشید بتافت
آخر به کمالِ ذرهای راه نیافت
Though the heart raced far across this desert plain of unknowns,
It knew not a single hair—yet split a hair in twain.
A thousand suns blazed within my heart,
Yet of perfection’s path I found not even a grain.
A thousand suns of knowledge and wisdom shone within him, yet he stood in perpetual reverence before the vastness of existence. This humility was not weakness; it was the mark of true genius.
The gradual ascent of human civilization has always depended upon such spirits—men and women whose lives and thoughts were oriented not toward self, but toward humanity. Today, the grand edifice of our shared civilization stands exposed to fierce storms of self-centeredness, excess, and discord. More than ever, it needs the presence of elevated souls like Ibn Sina: minds driven by boundless curiosity, free of narrow prejudice, and eager to learn from every tradition—East and West alike. Without arrogance or dogma, he sought out the best of Persian, Greek, Indian, and later Western thought, forging bridges of the intellect that still carry us forward.
To honor Ibn Sina is therefore to honor the very foundations of modern civilization—foundations built upon reason, ethical inquiry, careful observation, and the unity of human knowledge. His writings inspired physicians and philosophers for generations on both sides of the Mediterranean. His clinical method anticipated aspects of evidence-based medicine; his reflections on the soul and the body foreshadowed the biopsychosocial understanding of health; his phonetic studies prefigured modern linguistics by nearly a thousand years.
Ladies and gentlemen, Avicenna was not merely a man of the tenth and eleventh centuries. He was, and remains, a man of every century. A bridge between East and West. A reminder that the highest form of power is the power of the mind placed in the service of humanity.
May the light of that Eastern sun continue to warm and guide us all.
Thank you.
---