In 814 CE Al Kindi was sent to Baghdad for advanced education. Baghdad was now ruled by the Caliph al Mamun who was a scholar in his own right and had studied medicine, fiqh, logic, and was a Hafiz-e-Qur’an. Mamun went further than his predecessors in encouraging learning and scholarship. He elevated the House of Translation to Baitul Hikmah (House of Wisdom). Here he invited scholars from Greece, India and Persia to translate and further the work of the Greek philosophers, the Hindu mathematicians and Persian mystics. From Greece came the works of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Galen, Hippocrates, Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, Demosthenes, Anthemeus and Pythagoras. From India arrived scholars with knowledge of the Indian numerals, the concept of zero, Ayurvedic medicine, and the astronomical works of Aryabhatta and Brahmagupta. From China came the science of alchemy and the technologies of paper, silk and pottery. The Persians brought in the disciplines of administration, agriculture and irrigation. The scholars who were engaged in the work of translation included Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus. The Muslims learned from these sources and gave to the world Algebra, Chemistry, Sociology and the concept of infinity.

The bright, young al-Kindi soon attracted the attention of al Mamun who appointed him a translator at the Baitul Hikmah. Here, al Kindi came into contact with the towering philosophers of the age, the likes of Ibn Hayyan (d 815), the inventor of the science of chemistry, and the mathematician Al Khwarizmi (d 863), the inventor of Algebra.
Al Kindi was a versatile genius. He stands tall even among the intellectual giants of the era. His contributions embrace logic, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, physics, geometry, medicine and music. He is credited with writing 241 books in the following disciplines: logic 9, mathematics 11, astronomy 16, physics 12, geometry 32, medicine 22, and music 7.
In mathematics, he further developed, together with Al Khwarizmi, the Indian number system, and applied it to decimals. He made original contributions to spherical geometry and applied it to astronomy. In chemistry, he showed that base metals could not be converted to gold, in opposition to the prevailing views of alchemists. In physics, he worked on the theory of sound and showed that the human voice creates waves which travel through the air and are received by the cochlea in the ear. In optics he experimented with the reflection of light and showed how a convex mirror focused incoming rays onto a single point. In medicine, he developed a systematic methodology for administering appropriate dosage of medicine. In music he studied harmony and pitch and showed how frequencies can be combined to produce harmonics. He studied time and space and held that they were both finite, as opposed to the views of Aristotle. He is best known for his study of the concept of infinity and “the paradox of the infinite” named after him.

Al Kindi developed his own ideas on akhlaq (character and ethics). Like the Sufi masters he advised the reader against attachment to the physical world. At the same time, like the Imams of fiqh, he prescribed temperance in the pursuit of happiness. He held courage and wisdom to be worthwhile attributes of the mind and soul but even here temperance was required. Happiness, he propounded, lay a wise balance between attachment and detachment, between courage and rashness. In his attempts to develop a science of akhlaq, he presaged Nasiruddin al Tusi (d 1274) of Persia by four hundred years.

Al Kindi was a principal bridge in the transmission of Greek and Arabic knowledge to Western Europe. In 1085 CE the city of Toledo, the old Gothic capital in the heart of Spain, fell to the crusaders. The conquering Christians established a school of translation wherein Greco-Arabic texts were translated into Latin. Among the books so translated were a large number written by al Kindi. Included in it were the manuscripts De Intellectu, Ilayiat e Aristu, al Mosiqa and Ikhtiyarat al Ayyam. His works influenced Roger Bacon (d 1292 CE) in the Latin West and Ibn Sina (d 1037 CE )and Ibn Rushd (d 1198 CE ) in the Islamic world.

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