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.
Isabel de Villena
Born Elionor de Villena in 1430 Isabel was the illegitimate child of Enrique de Villena, an aristocrat and writer who was related to the royal line of Castile and Aragon, and an unknown noblewoman. She was raised by Queen Maria of Castile of Valencia from the time she was four. She lived in the court of Alfonso V of Aragon (the Magnanimous) and was educated there until 1445 when she became a nun in the Monastery of la Trinidad. She was fifteen years old. This monastery, La Trinitat, was founded by Queen Maria de Luna, who was also the chief benefactor. Isabel was elected abbess of the convent in 1462 and took charge in 1463. According to Rosanna Cantavella, a scholar who has extensively studied Sor Isabel, there was a rumor that there had to be divine intervention from the Archangel Michael that allowed Isabel to be elected as abbess, simply because it would have been very difficult for her to be elected on her own because of the fact that she was an illegitimate child. Illegitimate children were not usually eligible for such positions, but Isabel was elected anyway.