Summary: Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 9th-century Arab philosopher al-Kindi. The author of more than 250 works, he wrote on many different subjects, from optics to mathematics, music and astrology. He was the first significant thinker to argue that philosophy and Islam had much to offer each other. Today al-Kindi is regarded as one of the greatest scholars of the medieval Islamic world. Melvyn Bragg is joined by Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London; James Montgomery, Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic Elect at the University of Cambridge and Amira Bennison, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge.
