 Toward the end of his life Avicenna wrote two more summae in slightly divergent modes. In one of them, which he called Eastern Philosophy (al-Mashriqiyyūn or al-Ḥikma al-mashriqiyya, GS 8) to reflect his own locality in the East of the Islamic world, broader Khurasan (mashriq), he concentrated on “matters about which researchers have disagreed” in logic, physics, and metaphysics, but not mathematics or the subjects of practical philosophy (except for prophetic legislation which he introduced; see below) insofar as there was little disagreement about them. His approach is doctrinal, not historical, presenting, as he says, “the fundamental elements of true philosophy which was discovered by someone who examined a lot, reflected long,” and had nearly perfect syllogistic prowess, namely, himself (GS 8, p. 2 and 4; transl. and analysis Gutas 2014a, 35–40; Gutas 2000). In the second, also his very last summa, he diverged even more drastically from traditional modes of presentation and developed an allusive and suggestive style which he called “pointers and reminders” (al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, GS 9). The purpose in this, for which he borrowed the topos of late antique Aristotelian commentarial tradition explaining why Aristotle had developed a cryptic style of writing, was to train the student by providing not whole arguments and fully articulated theories but only pointers and reminders to them which the student would complete himself. The book, in two parts, deals with logic in the first and with physics, metaphysics, and metaphysics of the rational soul in the second. It proved hugely popular as a succinct though frequently amphibolous statement of his mature philosophy, open to interpretation, and it became the object of repeated commentaries throughout the centuries, apparently as Avicenna must have intended. It is a difficult work, and it must be understood always through constant reference to the more explicit expository statement of Avicenna’s theories in The Cure. Traditionally it has rarely been read except together with a commentary, notably those of Fakhr-ad-Dīn al-Rāzī and especially Naṣīr-ad-Dīn   al-Ṭūsī.[5]