page_title: Arabs
section_title: Philosophy
hierarchical_section_title: Arabs / Culture / Philosophy
context_page_description: An Arab, plural Arabic: عَرَبٌ‎, ISO 233: ‘arab; is a person inhabiting the Arab world. Arabs primarily live among the Arab states in Western Asia, Northern Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Western Indian Ocean islands. They also live, in significant numbers, in the Americas, Western Europe, Indonesia, Israel, Turkey, and Iran. The Arab diaspora is established around the world.
  The first mention of Arabs appeared in the mid-9th century BCE as a tribal people in eastern and southern Syria, and the north of the Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as the succeeding Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian empires. The Nabataeans, an Arab people, formed their Kingdom near Petra in the 3rd century BC. Arab tribes, most notably the Ghassanids and Lakhmids, begin to appear in the southern Syrian Desert from the mid 3rd century CE onward, during the mid to later stages of the Roman and Sasanian empires.
  Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate, "Arab" referred to any of the largely nomadic and settled Semitic people from the Arabian Peninsula, Syrian Desert, and North and Lower Mesopotamia.
context_section_description: Arabic philosophy refers to philosophical thought in the Arab world. Schools of Arabic thought include Avicennism and Averroism. The first great Arab thinker is widely regarded to be al-Kindi (801–873 A.D.), a Neo-Platonic philosopher, mathematician and scientist who lived in Kufa and Baghdad (modern day Iraq). After being appointed by the Abbasid Caliphs to translate Greek scientific and philosophical texts into Arabic, he wrote a number of original treatises of his own on a range of subjects, from metaphysics and ethics to mathematics and pharmacology.
  Much of his philosophical output focuses on theological subjects such as the nature of God, the soul and prophetic knowledge. Doctrines of the Arabic philosophers of the 9th–12th century who influenced medieval Scholasticism in Europe. The Arabic tradition combines Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. Influential thinkers include the Persians al-Farabi and Avicenna. The Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew and Latin, this contributed to the development of modern European philosophy. The Arabic tradition was developed by Moses Maimonides and Ibn Khaldun.
caption: Averroes, founder of the Averroism school of philosophy, was influential in the rise of secular thought in Western Europe.
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