- Karen Armstrong
gether so that they formed a consistent, total and logical
world-view. It was, perhaps, a philosophical version of tawhid.
Faylasufs were good Muslims too in their social concern; they
despised the luxurious society of the court and the despotism
of the caliphs. Some of them wanted to transform society ac-
cording to their ideal. They worked as astrologers and physi-
cians in the court and other great households, and this had a
marked though marginal effect on the culture. None of the
Faylasufs attempted such a comprehensive reformation as the
ulama, however, and produced nothing with the popular ap-
peal of the Shariah.
Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. 870) was the first major Fayla-
suf or "Philosopher" of the Muslim world. Born in Kufah and
educated in Basrah, he settled finally in Baghdad, where he
enjoyed the patronage of al-Mamun. In the capital he worked
closely with the Mutazilites in their attempt to rid theology
(kalam) of anthropomorphism, but he did not confine himself,
as they did, to Muslim sources, but sought wisdom also from
the Greek sages. Thus he applied Aristotle's proof for the ex-
istence of the First Cause to the God of the Quran. Like all
the later Faylasufs, he believed that Muslims should seek
truth wherever it was found, even from foreign peoples whose
religion was different from their own. The revealed teachings
in the Quran about God and the soul were parables of ab-
stract philosophical truths, which made them accessible to
the masses, who were incapable of rational thought. Revealed
religion, therefore, was a "poor man's Falsafah," as it were. A
Faylasuf such as al-Kindi was not trying to subordinate reve-
lation to reason, but to see the inner soul of scripture, in
rather the same way as the Shiis sought the batin truth of the
Quran.
It was, however, a musician of Turkish origin who fully es-
tablished the Islamic tradition of rationalistic philosophy.
Abu Nasr al-Farabi (d. 950) went further than al-Kindi in see-