ABSTRACT
In its methodological sophistication, its metaphysical elaboration and its distinctive approach to the problem of revealed religion, the thought of al-Fārābī represents not only an advance on that of al-Kindī but a break with it. The cumulative achievements of the Baghdad translators, and in particular the intellectual discipline of the Baghdad philosophical school led by al-Fārābī’s teacher Mattā ibn Yūnus, would seem to relegate the earlier al-Kindī to the role of a primitive initiator, enjoying some historical importance but little if any abiding philosophical influence. That such was not the case, however, is clear from the works of his most prominent epigone, the Khurasanian philosopher Abu’l-Ḥasan Muhammad ibn Yūsuf al-‘Āmirī (d. 381/992).
