son might be rejected by another. But
public opinion will probably agree in naming three persons as having
claim to the highest rank in Arab learning. They are Al-Kindi,
Al-Farabi, and Ali-ibn Sina, commonly called Avicenna. Ali-bin Ridhwan,
Al-Ghazali, Ibn Bajah (Avempace), and Ibn Rashid (Averroes) have also
their claims to be considered, while Thalab bin Korra, Kosta bin Luka,
Al-Tavhidi, and Al-Majridi were also all eminent men. A few details
will be given about the first seven of the names just mentioned.

Yakub-bin Ishak Al-Kindi, the philosopher of the Arabs, known in
Europe by the corrupted name of Alchendius, possessed an encyclopaedic
mind, and being himself a living encyclopaedia, he composed one of all
the sciences. He divided philosophy into three branches, the
mathematical, the physical, and the ethical. He declared the nullity
of alchemy, which Ibn Sina had again brought to honourable notice,
till the physician Abdul Latif declaimed against it. But Al-Kindi was
not sufficiently advanced to write against astrology, which is still
in full force all over the East even in our own times. Only one of his
works has as yet been published in Europe, and that treats on the
composition of medicines, though we possess the titles of not less
than two hundred and thirty-four works composed by him on a variety of
subjects. He died A.D. 861.

Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (Alfarabius), called by the Arabs a second
Aristotle, is generally considered to be the second Arab philosopher;
Avicenna, who always quotes him in his works, the third; the first
place being assigned to Al-Kindi. Al-Farabi studied Arabic (he was a
Turk by birth) and philosophy in Baghdad, where he attended the
lectures of Abu Bishr Matta bin Yunus, who possessed, and also
imparted to his pupils, the gift of expressing the deepest meanings in
the easiest words. From Baghdad he went to Harran, where Yuhanna bin
Khailan, the Christian philosopher, was teaching logic, and after his
return he made all the works of Aristotle his special study. It is
related that the following note was found inscribed in Al-Farabi's
handwriting on a copy of Aristotle's treatise on the soul: 'I have
read over this book two hundred times.' He also said that he had read
over Aristotle's 'Physics' forty times, and felt that he ought to read
it over again. Abul Kasim Said, of Cordova, says in his 'Classes of
Philosophers' that 'Al-Farabi led all the professors of Islam to the
right underst