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.
Vegni
The Vegni are an Italian family from Siena. The medioeval origins of the family have limited documentation.
The origin of the family is in Siena, with Bencivenne, father of Aringhieri, whose children Guido,Iacobina and Ranieri are mentioned in a contract of a house sale in 1201. The son of Guido, Bencivenni, is the first one to have a recognised profession mentioned in the documents. A notary of the royal chamber, called Bencivennis olim Guidi, was active in Siena in the first part of the 13th century. The patronymic Bencivennis (the Latin genitive) is used, abbreviated as bcVennis in the documents signed by Luca, a notary, in documents he drew up during late 13th. Pietro olim (of) Luca bcVennis was active in Siena until 1321. The sons of Pietro settled in the area of Chianciano, focusing the centre of interests of the family in the South of the Siena Republic until the fall of it in 1555. The surname Bencivennis remains in official documents during all the Republican period, to disappear at the end of the 16th century, substituted by Vegni. The last one to use it in official documents is Eustachio Bencivennis or bcVegnis, again a notary, who died in 1585. His grandson Giovanni Battista di Pietro, a notary in Chianciano between 1600 and 1641, signs his documents as Vegni, although he still uses the same private legal seal with the family coat of arms.