Abu Yusuf al-Kindi, known to history as the "philosopher of the Arabs," would be better remembered as Peter Adamson has suggested: an eclectic and synthetic thinker who was an enthusiastic heir of late Hellenism as it emerged anew in the vibrant intellectual milieu of 9th century Baghdad.
To limit Abu Yusuf to his ethnicity or tribal affiliation would be as ridiculous as limiting Seneca to his provincial roots by naming him the "philosopher of the Iberians." Both thinkers transcended the parochialism implied by such labels to become figures of world-historical importance: Sages for the Ages.
As a Muslim intellectual, al-Kindi exemplified the rich potential of the Irano-Semitic-Hellenic humanism that is falsafa. Indeed, one might even say he invented it--although I would prefer to argue that it invented him. In other words, al-Kindi was attuned to the temper of his times and became, as a consequence, what Emerson might term a "representative man." To read al-Kindi is to become acquainted with the sophisticated, urbane, and intellectually progressive Islam that the 'Abbasid court cultivated in the century that followed the fall of the Damascene Umayyad dynasty (750 CE).
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