Background
Al-Kindī was born in c. 801 in Basra, Iraq, to an aristocratic family of the Kinda tribe, descended from the chieftain al-Ash'ath ibn Qays, a contemporary of Muhammad. His father Ishaq was the governor of Kufa.
mathematician musician philosopher physician Polymath
Al-Kindī was born in c. 801 in Basra, Iraq, to an aristocratic family of the Kinda tribe, descended from the chieftain al-Ash'ath ibn Qays, a contemporary of Muhammad. His father Ishaq was the governor of Kufa.
Al-Kindī received his preliminary education in Kufa. He later went to complete his studies in Baghdad.
Al-Kindī lived in Kufa, Basra, and Baghdad, where he served under the Abbasside caliphs as a translator of Greek works, an astrologer, and a tutor of princes. He died about 870. Like almost all early Arabian philosophers, al-Kindī was also a scientist, writing extensively on physics and astrology. About 270 of his writings, mostly short tracts, are known by title, but only a few have survived, chiefly through Latin translations made during the Middle Ages. Recently, however, a substantial number of his tracts have been discovered in their original Arabic texts in manuscripts from Istanbul. Al-Kindī, one of the earliest Arabian philosophers, was largely dependent upon Greek philosophy, not, as was later Farabi, on the direct use of Aristotle's writings, but rather upon Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean interpretations of Aristotelianism. The most original feature in al-Kindī's philosophy is his four-fold division of the intellect, as against the threefold division adopted by Alexander of Aphrodisia, the commentator on Aristotle. From the recently discovered works of al-Kindī his attitude towards traditional religion appears in a clearer light; far from being indifferent to it, as were some of the Greek-minded Arabian philosophers, he attempted to demonstrate the basic harmony of revelation and intellectual speculation. The central theme underpinning al-Kindī'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. In the field of mathematics, al-Kindī 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.