Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAbdallāh, more commonly known as Ibn Sīnā, and known in the Latin West as Avicenna, was a preeminent Islamic philosopher whose works and ideas revolutionized medieval thought, both in the Islamic world and Latin West. He came from an Ismāʿilī family, but subscribed to Neoplatonized Aristotelianism, being Ḥanafī in law. While taking his cue from the Greek sources translated into Arabic during the Graeco-Arabic translation movement in the previous century, Ibn Sīnā would innovate philosophical trends and ideas wholly of his own, forcing medieval thinkers to turn away from Greek and Syriac translated sources, and to begin responding directly to him. Born in 370/980 in Afshana near Bukhārā, he began studying philosophy at an early age, his first teacher being a certain Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Nātilī, with whom he studied logic. He is reported to have been an autodidact in the natural sciences and medicine, many of his ideas having no precedent in ancient Greek literature. Much of the information about his life comes from an autobiography he dictated to his student and companion Abū ʿUbayd al-Jawzjānī (alt. spelling: Jūzjānī). Ibn Sīnā came from a political family. His father was a Samānid governor, but moved his household to nearby Bukhārā when Ibn Sīnā was still young. By the time Ibn Sīna turned eighteen, he reports that he had finished his philosophical training, and began to work as a physician in the service of the Samanid ruler Nūḥ b. Manṣūr (r. 365/976-387/997). When the Samanid dynasty was overthrown by the Qarakhanids, Avicenna fled to nearby Khurāsān and then to western Iran. He would later work in the service of the Būyids in Iran, likely as a court physician, and later as a vizier. He then moved to Isfahan to work for the Kakuyids. He died while on official trip to Hamadan in 428/1037, where he was buried.