"He lived in a period of competitive patronage of the sciences, especially mathematics and astronomy, in the Middle East and Central Asia. He is said to have been a high administrative official in a small principality made up of Basra, in what is now Iraq, and the adjacent region of Ahwâz."

“Whosoever seeks the truth will not proceed by studying the writings of his predecessors and by simply accepting his own good opinion of them. Whosoever studies works of science must, if he wants to find the truth, transform himself into a critic of everything he reads. He must examine tests and explanations with the greatest precision and question them from all angles and aspects.”

“He was one of the most distinguished and prolific mathematicians in the medieval tradition of Arabic Islamic science. He became known in Europe in the thirteenth century as the author of the book on optics—the mathematical theory of vision. In his Kitâb al-Manâ zir , if the eleventh-century he offered a new solution to the problem of vision, combining experimental investigations of the behavior of light with inventive geometrical proofs and constant forays into the psychology of visual perception — all systematically tied together to form a coherent alternative to the Euclidean and Ptolemaic theories of "visual rays" issuing from the eye.”

“If learning the truth is the scientists goal......Then he must make himself the enemy of all that he reads.”

“UN: 1000 Years of Arabic Optics”

“I constantly sought knowledge and truth, and it became my belief that for gaining access to the effulgence and closeness to God, there is no better way than that of searching for truth and knowledge.”

“He moved to Egypt and supported himself by teaching and by copying Arabic translations of Greek mathematical classics such as Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s Almagest.”