the eastern philosophers
the aristotelian philosophy was first made known to the muslim world through the medium of syriac translations and commentaries, and the particular commentaries used amongst the syrians never ceased to control the direction of arabic thought. from the time of al-ma´mun the text of aristotle began to be better known, as translations were made directly from the greek, and this resulted in a more accurate appreciation of his teaching, although still largely controlled by the suggestions of the commentaries circulated amongst the syrians. the arabic writers give the name of failasuf (plur. falasifa), a transliteration of the greek [greek: philosophos φιλόσοφος], to those who based their study directly on the greek text, either as translators or as students of philosophy, or as the pupils of those who used the greek text. the word is used to denote a particular series of arabic scholars who arose in the third century a.h. and came to an end in the seventh century, and who had their origin in the more accurate study of aristotle based on an examination of the greek text and the greek commentators whose work was circulated in syria, and is employed as though these falasifa formed a par[pg 136]ticular sect or school of thought. other philosophical students were termed hakim or nazir.
the line of these falasifa forms the most important group in the history of islamic culture. it was they who were largely responsible for awakening aristotelian studies in latin christendom, and it was they who developed the aristotelian tradition which islam had received from the syriac community, correcting and revising its contents by a direct study of the greek text and working out their conclusions on lines indicated by the neo-platonic commentators.
the first of the series is yaqub b. ishaq al-kindi (d. circ. 260 a.h. = 873 a.d.), who began very much as a mu`tazilite interested in the theological problems discussed by the members of that school of thought, but desirous of testing and examining these more accurately, made use of the translations taken directly from the greek and then only recently published. by this means he brought a much stricter method to bear, and thus opened the way to an aristotelian scholarship much in advance of anything which had been contemplated so far. as a result his pupils and those who came after them raised new questions and ceased to confine themselves to mu`tazilite problems, and al-kindi was their intellectual ancestor in those new enquiries which his methods and his use of the greek text alone made possible. it is a strange fact that al-kindi, the parent of arabic philosophy, was himself one of the very few leaders of arabic thought who was a true[pg 137] arab by race. for the most part the scientists and philosophers of the muslim world were of persian, turkish, or berber blood, but al-kindi was descended from the yemenite kings of kinda (cf. genealogy quoted from the tarikh al-hakama cited in note (22) of de slane’s trans. of ibn khallikan, vol. i. p. 355). very little is known about his life, save that his father was governor of kufa, that he himself studied at baghdad, under what teachers is not known, and stood high in favour with the khalif mu`tasim (a.h. 218-227). his real training and equipment lay in a knowledge of greek, which he used in preparing translations of aristotle’s metaphysics, ptolemy’s geography, and a revised edition of the arabic version of euclid. besides this he made arabic abridgments of aristotle’s poetica and hermeneutica, and porphyry’s isagoge, and wrote commentaries on aristotle’s analytica posteriora, sophistica elenchi, the categories, the apocryphal apology; on ptolemy’s almagesta and euclid’s elements, and original treatises, of which the essay “on the intellect” and another “on the five essences” are the most noteworthy (latin tr. by a. nagy in baeumker and hertling’s beiträge zur geschichte der philosophie des ma. ii. 5. münster, 1897).
