Avicenna
Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
Vicente Medina
Medina was born in 1866 in the small spa town of Archena, some 25 kilometres from the regional capital Murcia. His mother was a dressmaker; his father, Juan de Dios Medina, was a small businessman who was known for his love of literature and the arts. Juan de Dios ran the store at the Archena spa, where the young Medina was exposed to authors such as Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, José de Espronceda, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola.