ABSTRACT
When preparing myself to write about medieval Islamic philosophy and the classical tradition, I felt a touch of anxiety-a fear that I would be belaboring the obvious.1 For medieval Islamic philosophy, as we know it, was a direct result of the translations of Greek philosophy and science to Arabic. It is rooted in Greek philosophy. I also felt some discomfort with the term medieval, a chronological and cultural term commonly applied to European history. To what extent and in what sense can it apply to Islamic history? This is a question which should at least be asked, even though it is beyond my scope to go into it here. For my purposes, when writing about the medieval Islamic philosophers I will confine myself to those philosophers who flourished between the 9th and 12th centuries. They include such major figures as Kindi (al-Kindi) (d. ca. 870), Alfarabi (alFarabi) (d. 950), Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (d. 1037) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (d. 1198). These are also the main philosophers who influenced the development of Jewish and medieval Latin scholastic thought.
