Some books may have been lost already during the reign of...

Some books may have been lost already during the reign of the caliph al-Mutawakkil who fought vehemently against the rationalizing tendencies of his time and confiscated for a while al-Kindi’s library. The famous eighth/fourteenth century historian Ibn Khaldun adds further proof to the lack of manuscripts when he says: “We have not found any information concerning (al-Kindi’s) book (called al-Jafr), and we have not seen anyone who has seen it.

Perhaps it was lost with those books which Hulagu, the ruler of Baghdad threw into the Tigris when the Tatars took possession of Baghdad and killed the last caliph, al-Musta’sim.” The obscurity of al-Kinda’s language, due to lack of an Arabic philosophical terminology, rendered his writings hard of access and made them obsolete while al-Farabi’s philosophical oeuvre eventually overshadowed them.

Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani al-Mantiqi recorded the ruler of Sijistan, Ja’far ibn Babuyah, as having criticized al-Kindi because of his bad language. It is, nevertheless, the merit of al-Kindi to have made access to Greek philosophy and science possible and to have established from rare and obscure sources the foundation of philosophy in Islam, partly continued and enlarged later on by al-Farabi.

Al-Kindi enjoyed the confidence and support of the seventh and eighth ‘Abasid caliphs, al-Ma’mun and his brother and successor. To al-Mu’tasim he dedicated his On First Philosophy, and some other treatises to the caliph’s son Ahmad with whose education he was entrusted. Unlike his contemporary Hunayn ibn Ishaq, al-Kindi knew neither Greek nor Syriac. He therefore commissioned or adopted translations, e.g. those made by Ibn Na’ima, Eustathius (Astat) and Ibn al-Bitriq.

The old translations, commissioned or used by al- Kindi, still lack the high philological standards set later on by Hunayn ibn Ishaq. But it was al-Kindi who broke new ground in a fertile soil and introduced into the Arabspeaking world the first translations of Greek philosophy. He was above all interested in gathering and translating works of Plato and Aristotle, both of whom he mentioned by name. But under the cover of these two philosophers other pseud epigraphic works became known, e.g.

Porphyry’s paraphrase of part of Plotinus’ Enneads known as Aristotle’s Theology. Al-Kindi, however, had a good grasp of the genuine works of Aristotle.