Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato
and Aristotle would become highly revered in the medieval Islamic
world.
Abu Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn
ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ
al-Kindī (Arabic:
أبو يوسف
يعقوب بن
إسحاق
الصبّاح
الكندي,
Latin:
Alkindus) (c. 801–873 CE), known as "the
Philosopher of the Arabs", was a Muslim Arab philosopher,
mathematician,
physician,
and musician. Al-Kindi
was the first of the Muslim peripatetic
philosophers, and is unanimously hailed
as the "father of Islamic or Arabic
philosophy"
for his synthesis, adaptation and
promotion of Greek and Hellenistic philosophy
in the Muslim
world.
Al-Kindi was
a descendant of the Kinda tribe. He
was born and educated in Kufa, before
going to pursue further studies in Baghdad. Al-Kindi
became a prominent figure in the House of
Wisdom, and a number of
Abbasid Caliphs
appointed him to oversee the translation of Greek scientific
and philosophical texts into the Arabic
language. This contact with "the philosophy of
the ancients" (as Greek philosophy was often referred to by Muslim
scholars) had a profound effect on his intellectual development,
and led him to write hundreds of original treatises of his own on a
range of subjects ranging from metaphysics,
ethics, logic and psychology,
to medicine, pharmacology,
mathematics,
astronomy, astrology and optics, and
further afield to more practical topics like
perfumes, swords, jewels, glass, dyes, zoology, tides, mirrors, meteorology
and earthquakes.
In the field
of mathematics, al-Kindi played an important role in
introducing Indian numerals
to the Islamic and
Christian
world. He was a
pioneer in cryptanalysis
and devised several new methods of
breaking ciphers. Using his
mathematical and medical expertise, he was able to develop a scale
that would allow doctors to quantify the potency of their
medication.
The central
theme underpinning al-Kindi´s philosophical writings is the
compatibility between philosophy and other "orthodox" Islamic
sciences, particularly theology. And many
of his works deal with subjects that theology had an immediate
interest in. These include the nature of God, the
soul and prophetic
knowledge. But despite
the important role he played in making philosophy accessible to
Muslim intellectuals, his own philosophical output was largely
overshadowed by that of al-Farabi and very few
of his texts are available for modern scholars to
examine.
FROM
WIKIPEDIA