  Avicenna (Abû ‘Alî al-Husayn b.‘Abd Allah Ibn Sînâ, d. 1037), the multi-talented and prodigiously productive faylasûf whose work had the greatest impact among later Muslim thinkers, unequivocally posited an independent, self-conscious, substantial and immortal soul, and with it asserted its immortality. Avicenna could do this, following Plato rather than Aristotle in positing an essential separation of body and soul. Avicenna opens his chapter on the soul in the encyclopedic work Al-Shifâ’ (known in English both as “The Healing” and “The Cure”) asserting this separate  existence.[21] Later, in both The Healing itself and in its abridged form of the Najât (called both “The Deliverance,” and “The  Salvation”),[22] Avicenna presents arguments to support this claim.