The name of this celebrated personage is _Abu Alí Husain Ben Abdallah, Ben Sina, Al Shaikh Al ráis_; he is commonly called _Ibn Sina_; the Jews name him _Arabisans Aben Sina_; and the Christians _Avisenna_. Herbelot gives an account nearly similar to that of the Dabistán, of the astonishing learning of Abu Alí and of his flight before the persecutions of the Sultan Mahmud, and the cure which the famous doctor performed upon the nephew of the king of Georgia. [282] According to Abulfeda and other authors, he was born in the town of Bokhara, in 370 of the Hejira (980 A. D.). [283] Mansur I, son of Abdelmalek, was the sixth king of the Samánís: this dynasty derived their name from Sámán, whose father is unknown. Sámán, a robber, had a son, Assad, who quitted the infamous profession of his father, and educated his sons in a manner which enabled them to rise to the highest dignities under the Khalif Al-Mamon and his successors. Ismâil, a grandson of Assad, founded the princely dynasty in Mavaralnahar (Transoxana), to which other provinces were annexed. Nine Samanian kings ruled from the year of the Hejira 261 to 388 (A. D. 874-998). [284] The first of the dynasty of the Ghasnavis. According to the author of Nighiaristan, quoted by Herbelot, Avisenna, when at the court of Mamon, king of Khorasan, was called by Mahmúd to his own capital; the refusal of the Shaikh to obey drew upon him Mahmud’s persecutions. [285] Kabus, a prince of the Dilámi dynasty, ruled in the provinces of Giorgian, Ghitan, Mazinderan, and Tabaristan, upon the western and southern shores of the Caspian sea. [286] The sagacity of Avisenna can but remind us of that with which Eristratus, a disciple of Chrysippus and grandson of Aristotle, discovered the secret cause of the mortal malady of Antiochus, son of the Syrian king Seleucus: the young prince was in love with his stepmother, Stratonice. But Kabus, for preserving the life of his nephew, was subject to no personal sacrifice; Seleucus saved his son by the cession of his own wife. [287] Ráí is a town in Irak Ajemí, or Persian Irak. [288] Majed-doulah, the eighth prince of the Búyí dynasty, reigned in Isfahan and ín Persian Irak, during his minority under the tutelage of his mother, Seidát; at his majority he confided the vizirate to Avisenna, on which account an open war broke out between him and his mother. Seidát defeated and took in a battle, before the town of Rái, her son, and reassumed the government, but afterwards resigned it to him, satisfied to guide him by her counsels, much to his advantage, until her death; after which the weak prince delivered himself into the hands of his conqueror Mahmud Sabak tegin.