striking that the areas in which creativity occurred are not simply those in
which prestigious Greek texts were introduced but rather areas in which there
was a cross-connection of imports from India—apparently in the form not of
textual translations but of practical knowledge. Thus, Thabit ibn Qurra began
as a money changer in Harran (DSB, 1981: 13:288), and al-Khwarizmi, an
Iranian from the Oxus delta, appears to have introduced the decimal system
of Indian numerals (i.e., what Europeans call Arabic numerals). A single line
of imports tends to stifle creativity; this is circumvented by multiple and
heterogeneous sources of imports, which reinstate the creative competition and
recombination of ideas.
This scientific creativity remained largely insulated from philosophy. But
Greek cultural capital was now spilling over into the sphere of Arab intellec-
tuals. The first to take advantage of it was al-Kindi, who happened to be closest
to the scene, in his position as court overseer of the translators at Baghdad.
The result of his labors was not very original; he popularized Greek learning
in Arabic, writing an encyclopedic range of treatises across all the sciences, not
omitting logic and philosophy. He had contacts with the Baghdad school of
MuÀtazilites—then at the height of their political dominance—and he made an
effort to accommodate Greek philosophy to Muslim theological issues. Titles
of his books indicate he wrote on such MuÀtazilite themes as atoms, the
essences of bodies, and the unity of God (Watt, 1973: 207–208). Al-Kindi’s
own position was largely Neoplatonic, but modified to defend theologican
doctrines of the creation of the world ex nihilo, the possibility of miracles and
prophecy, and God’s eventual destruction of the world. Al-Kindi’s position was
essentially eclectic, and was adopted neither by the theologians nor by the
Greek-oriented falasifa. As the latter position came into its own after 900, it
took a stronger stand, in opposition to theological particularism, in the form
of Neoplatonism championed by al-Farabi. By this time al-Kindi’s importance
had faded, and the period of translating Greek texts was largely over.
The Sufi Cult of Religious Experience
What became known as the Sufis (after suf, the wool cloak worn by wandering
ascetics) began to appear in the 700s and 800s as an outcropping of ecstatic
religious persons apart from the teachers at the official mosques. Some were
wandering preachers; some were ultra-ritualists, making pilgrimages to holy
places and saying prayers every step of the way; some were visionaries, who
claimed a personal flash of divine contact or inspiration. There was at this time
no emphasis on the practice of meditation or systematic methods for inducing
visions. A frequent theme was asceticism, giving away one’s goods and wan-
dering in poverty, along with practicing sexual celibacy; yet the Sufis did not
Tensions of Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom^ •^405