Al-Kindi
The Philosopher of the Arabs. He opened the door between Greek thought and the Islamic world, and walked through it first.
Al-Kindi was born in Kufa and educated in Baghdad during the early Abbasid caliphate. He worked at the House of Wisdom, supervising translations of Greek texts into Arabic. He wrote over 250 works on philosophy, mathematics, medicine, music, and optics. He argued that philosophy and revelation are compatible paths to truth, and that studying the ancients is not impiety but obligation. Later generations called him the first philosopher of the Islamic world.
Places
Ideas
Words
“The seeker of truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients, but one who suspected the truth in them and follows argument.”
“We ought not to be ashamed of appreciating the truth and of acquiring it wherever it comes from.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Kufa
Born into an aristocratic Arab family in Kufa, a garrison city in southern Iraq. His father was governor of the city. He belonged to the Kinda tribe, one of the most prominent in pre-Islamic Arabia.
Working at the House of Wisdom
Joined the circle of scholars at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad under Caliph al-Ma'mun. He supervised translations of Greek philosophical and scientific texts into Arabic, bridging two intellectual worlds that had barely spoken to each other.
On First Philosophy
Wrote On First Philosophy, the first major philosophical work in Arabic. He argued that Greek philosophy and Islamic revelation were not enemies but allies in the search for truth. The book opened a conversation that would last five centuries.
Fall from Favor
Under Caliph al-Mutawakkil, who reversed the rationalist policies of his predecessors, al-Kindi lost his library and his position. He spent his last years in obscurity. The first philosopher of Islam died forgotten in Baghdad around 873.
Influence
Influenced by
- Aristotle
Al-Kindi supervised the translation of Aristotle into Arabic and built on his metaphysics.
- Plotinus
The book al-Kindi's circle produced as the Theology of Aristotle was in fact a paraphrase of Plotinus, which meant that Arabic philosophy inherited a Neoplatonic Aristotle from the beginning and did not discover the mistake for centuries.
Influenced
- Al-Farabi
Al-Kindi made the case that Greek philosophy could be written in Arabic and pursued by Muslims; al-Farabi took that settled and went on to build the system al-Kindi had only sketched.
- Roger Bacon
Bacon drew on al-Kindi's account of how power radiates in straight lines from every point of a body, using it alongside Ibn al-Haytham's optics to build his own theory of multiplication of species.
