Seerah al-Kindi al-Falsafi — Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (c.801-873 CE): The First Arab Philosopher, Patron of Translation, Author of Fi al-Falsafah al-Ula (On First Philosophy), Who Argued That Greek Philosophy and Islamic Revelation Access the Same Truth and Laid the Foundation for All Subsequent Islamic Philosophical Activity

Seerah al-Kindi al-Falsafi (سِيرَةُ الكِندِيِّ الفَيلَسُوف; full name: Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq ibn al-Sabbah al-Kindi; born approximately 185 AH / 801 CE in Basra or Kufa; died approximately 256 AH / 873 CE; he was the only Arab-Muslim philosopher of note in the first great period of Islamic philosophy; all subsequent major Islamic philosophers were Persian; his context: he was a court scholar during the reigns of the Abbasid caliphs al-Ma'mun [r. 813-833 CE], al-Mu'tasim [r. 833-842 CE], and al-Wathiq [r. 842-847 CE]; during the Ma'mun period, the Bayt al-Hikmah [House of Wisdom] in Baghdad was the center of translation of Greek texts into Arabic; al-Kindi was deeply involved in this enterprise — he commissioned translations, corrected existing ones, and wrote introductions; the major work: Fi al-Falsafah al-Ula [On First Philosophy]: his most important surviving philosophical text; addresses Aristotle's Metaphysics topics — the nature of first philosophy, the unity of God, and the divine attributes; argues that philosophy's proper object is the Real in itself [al-haqq al-awwal = the First Truth = God]; the argument for Greek-Islamic compatibility: al-Kindi's most significant cultural move was the argument that the truth is truth wherever it comes from; if Greek philosophy has established something true, Muslims should accept it — 'We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth and to assimilate it from whatever source it comes'; this argument was controversial in an Islamic world suspicious of Greek wisdom; it opened the door for the entire subsequent tradition of Islamic philosophy; topics al-Kindi addressed: [1] metaphysics: the nature of God [pure unity, no attributes that would imply multiplicity]; [2] cosmology: the eternity of the world question [he denied the world is eternal, unlike later philosophers]; [3] the intellect: al-Kindi's treatise 'On the Intellect' distinguished types of intellect [active, potential, acquired]; [4] mathematics: he wrote extensively on arithmetic and geometry; [5] optics: 'On Optics' influenced Roger Bacon; [6] music: on the mathematical theory of music; [7] medicine and pharmacology; [8] astrology: he accepted astrology's validity, which later philosophers questioned; the house of wisdom: the translation movement al-Kindi participated in — bringing Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen, and others into Arabic — was one of the most transformative intellectual events in history; the Arabic translations of Greek texts became the basis for Islamic philosophy and eventually for European scholasticism [via Latin translations from Arabic]; fall from favor: under the caliph al-Mutawakkil [r. 847-861 CE], who favored more traditional Islamic positions, al-Kindi lost court favor; accounts say his library was confiscated; his subsequent work and death are obscure; legacy: al-Kindi was superseded relatively quickly by more sophisticated philosophers [al-Farabi, Ibn Sina]; but without al-Kindi's pioneering argument that Greek philosophy was compatible with Islamic truth, the entire tradition of Islamic philosophy might not have developed as it did) is the founding figure of Islamic philosophy.