al-Kindi

Islam was a power in the 13th century, not so much by its conquests with the sword as by its conquests with the pen.

Muslim philosophy, as interpreted by Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Al-Ghazal, but most of all the philosophy of Averroes, was taught in all the universities.

Aristotle spoke Arabic before he was retranslated into the languages of Europe.

The Saracens, says Myers, were during the Middle Ages almost the sole repositories of the scientific knowledge of the world.

For instance, the Persian mathematician and astronomer, Al-Khwarizmi, worked at the House of Wisdom.

Al-Kindi, who's sometimes called the Father of Arab philosophy, was also associated with the House of Wisdom.

He spent most of his life in Baghdad.

Interestingly, the city also features in one of the great works of Arabic literature, The One Thousand and One Nights.

The advancement of science was driven by iconic polymaths, each contributing a distinct pillar to laboratory practice.

These polymaths were Jabir ibn Hayyan, al-Razi, al-Kindi, and ibn Sina.

Jabir ibn Hayyan, circa 721-815 CE, is commonly regarded as the father of chemistry.

Jabir prioritized absolute laboratory precision.

He finally died in 934.

He was a student of the great Muslim religious philosopher called Imam al-Kindi.

So in this book, he talks about several things.

There's a lot of this discussion today.

It seems that it was the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, the same man who established the city of Baghdad, who in some way instigated this Translation Movement, which would transform the culture of not just the Abbasid realms at that time, but the world at large for really the rest of history.

It is through the translation of these texts that a flourishing intellectual culture developed with its center in Baghdad, and which would produce some of the greatest scholars and philosophers in history: Al-Kindi, Thabit Ibn Qurra, Al-Farabi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Khwarizmi, the Banu Musa brothers, Al-Biruni, and many more.

Not to mention the many later figures like Ibn Sina and all subsequent scholars that couldn't exist without their influence downstream.

Scientific breakthroughs in mathematics, optics, physics, philosophy, astronomy, the development of music theory were accomplished in this environment, which still sends ripples down to our own day.

Do you understand the dichotomy here, right? In the time of the Umayyads, in the time of the Abbasids, in the time of the Ottomans, in the time of every civilization, and you had Muslim musicians And you had books written on, you know, oud and other types of i-instruments to play.

In fact, some of the po... scholars that are famous like Farabi actually wrote a book, Kindi wrote a book on music.

Kindi has musical notes and, and what to do, the philosopher, right? So you had that trend throughout all of Islam, all of Islam.

And you also have the pietistic scholars whom we love, whom we respect, and who are attempting to preserve the prophetic ideal.

And they're frowning, at the very least, on this whole institution, right? So you've had society do this while scholars don't want them to do it, and that tension has continued to perpetuate to our times.