Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/155

 by some other body, air, water, etc., which has the same surrounding surface. Admittedly al-Kindi shows a crude treatment of these ideas, but he was the first to direct Arabic thought in this direction, and from these arose a new attitude towards the revealed doctrine of creation on the part of those who came after him.

Al-Kindi, the "Philosopher of the Arabs," as he was called (circ. 365), contains our best account of the various sects existing in Islam towards the end of the 3rd century A.H. as he met them in the course of his travels. It has been published as the second volume of De Goeje's Bibliotheca Geographorum Arab. (Leiden., 1873).

The next great philosopher was Muhammad b. Muhammmad [sic] b. Tarkhan Abu Nasr al-Farabi (d. 339), of Turkish descent. He was "a celebrated philosopher, the greatest indeed that the Muslims ever had; he composed a number of works on logic, music, and other sciences. No Musulman ever reached in the philosophical sciences the same rank as he, and it was by the study of his writings and the imitation of his style that Avicenna attained proficiency and rendered his own works so useful." (Ibn Khallikan, iii. 307). He was born at Farab or Otrar near Balasaghum, but travelled widely. In the course of his wanderings he came to Baghdad but, as at the time he knew no Arabic, he was unable to enter into the intellectual life of the city. He set himself first to acquire a knowledge of the Arabic language, and then became