ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Before Essence and Existence Terminology Before embarking on this examination of being it may be helpful to provide a brief discussion of the terminology used for "being" by al-Kindi and his translators.

I will be examining passages from three main sources: first, the aforementioned Book on the Pure Good or Liber de Causis ;7 second, the Arabic paraphrase of Plotinus produced in al-Kindi's circle;8 and third, al-Kindi's best-known work, entitled On First Philosophy (hereafter FP). Part of the purpose of such texts was to establish technical terms for use in philosophy. Toward this end neologisms were invented, often for use in rendering Greek technical terms in Arabic.

This is the case with three terms we find used to mean "being": anniyya , huwiyya , and ays . Of these three, the one that has received the most attention is anniyya .

Even in medieval times Arabic scholars speculated on the derivation of the word, offering sometimes fanciful etymologies.9 Though my argument does not turn on any particular etymology, the most likely derivation seems to be that suggested by Gerhard Endress: it is a substantification of the Arabic anna , which means "that" (as in "it is true that al-Kindi is a philosopher").10 It makes its first appearance in Arabic literature at the time of al-Kindi's circle, and is prominent in the Arabic Plotinus and the Liber de Causis .

The same goes for the word huwiyya , which later acquires a different, technical meaning in al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, but in our texts is treated as a synonym for anniyya .

(The exception is a passage in the Arabic Plotinus where huwiyya is used to translate Plotinus's tautotes , "identity."11 This led the scholar Geoffrey Lewis mistakenly to render huwiyya as "identity" throughout his groundbreaking translation of the Arabic Plotinus.12 ) In the plural both huwiyyat and anniyyat are used as synonyms of the Greek onta , "beings."13 These terminological**[End Page 299]** features are carried over into al-Kindi's own works, so that huwiyya and anniyya seem to be accepted technical terms for the Greek einai and on in all the texts we will be considering.14 The term ays is more unusual, and to my knowledge appears at this time only in al-Kindi's own writings and in the translations produced within his circle.

15 Al-Kindi seems to have coined the word by imaginatively splitting the Arabic laysa , "is not," into la ("not") and ays ("being").