al-Kindi

Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (born c. 801, died c. 873 CE) is traditionally called the "Philosopher of the Arabs" — the first major thinker to work out philosophy in Arabic in the Aristotelian (Peripatetic) tradition. He came from the Kinda, a prominent Arab tribe of South Arabian origin, and his father is reported to have served as a provincial governor in Iraq (sources name either Kufa or Basra). His birthplace itself is disputed in the biographical tradition: most reports name Kufa, while some sources (including the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) give Basra. He is generally said to have been schooled in Basra and to have completed his studies in Baghdad, then the capital of the Abbasid caliphate.

In Baghdad he became associated with the court and with the great ninth-century movement to translate Greek learning into Arabic; the "circle of al-Kindi" produced Arabic versions of works of Aristotle and of Neoplatonic texts. He enjoyed the favor of the caliphs al-Ma'mun and al-Mu'tasim, and served as tutor to al-Mu'tasim's son Ahmad. He dedicated his best-known treatise, On First Philosophy, to the caliph al-Mu'tasim. He wrote on metaphysics, ethics, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, optics, music, and cryptology.

Later tradition reports that under the caliph al-Mutawakkil al-Kindi fell from favor — that rivals, including the mathematician Banu Musa brothers, engineered his disgrace, and that he was beaten and his library temporarily seized (and, by some accounts, later restored). (The honorific "the Arabs' philosopher" reflects later esteem.) He is reported to have died in Baghdad around 873. Many of these dates are traditional estimates rather than firmly documented.