Al-Kindi on education: Curriculum theorizing and the intercultural Minhaj

Abstract

This article presents Al-Kindi as the first Arab intercultural curriculum theorizer, rather than the first Arab philosopher as is often argued. He envisioned an intercultural and interdisciplinary curriculum within the Arabic intellectual tradition. This article proposes Al-Kindism as a conceptual framework for education that revisits interdisciplinary and intercultural possibilities geared toward conflict resolution and synthesis. It also explores how Al-Kindi was arguably the first in the Arabic intellectual tradition to initiate a move from Majlis to Minhaj, that is from Masjid learning practices centered on theological studies to schooling. In other words, in the absence of actual schooling, his educational vision offered a possibility of a conceptualized curriculum to be taught. Al-Kindi’s scholarly eagerness was driven not necessarily by, as generally perceived, the desire to promote philosophy, but more importantly, by the need to develop an intellectually responsive educational tradition to accommodate emerging intercultural encounters. He believed that the acquisition of true knowledge could only be achieved through intercultural competence and that such competence would eliminate the tension between Greek thought and Islamic culture. Thus, as a curriculum theorizer, Al-Kindi initiated a Minhaj marked by indebtedness to intercultural encounters, by a shift away from Majlis, and by the implementation of interdisciplinarity.

Keywords:

• Intercultural education
• Al-Kindi
• medieval Islamic philosophy
• Muslim education
• curriculum studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The Barmakids were an Iranian family from Balkh who won political ascendency under the early Abbasid Caliphs.

2 The term Mawali is used to refer to non-Arab Muslims and other allies.

3 It is important to note here that, for Al-Kindi, truth (haq) seems to consist of a blend of wisdom (hikmah) and knowledge (ma’rifah). In “On the Definitions and Descriptions of Things,” Al-Kindi defines Hikmah as “the virtue of the [rational] faculty, and is the knowledge of universal things in their true natures, and putting truths “haq” into action as one ought” (Adamson & Pormann, 2012, p. 307) and ma’rifah as “a belief that does not disappear” (Adamson & Pormann, 2012, p. 306), which seems to refer to what qualifies as factual knowledge. In Al-Kindi’s terminology, intellect and knowledge are guiding paths that determine truth.

4 Although I have retained Adamson and Pormann’s translation of Al-Kindi, I highly recommend that the singular “the way to the truth” be changed to the plural “the ways” to maintain the original intended meaning. We can see, for instance, that Subul is translated in its plural form in Ivry’s translation of the same section: “It is proper that our gratitude be great to those who have contributed even a little of the truth, let alone to those who have contributed much truth, since they have shared with us the fruits of their thought and facilitated for us the true (yet) hidden inquiries, in that they benefited us by those premises which facilitated our approaches (Subul) to the truth” (1974, p. 57).

5 This capacity seems to have developed from his involvement in the translation movement.

6 Jadal refers to dialectic and the art of disputation.

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Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar

Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar received his PhD (funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) from the University of Alberta, where he was awarded The Bacchus Graduate Research Prize for scholarly excellence in International and Multicultural Education. He was also awarded the University of Alberta President's Doctoral Prize of Distinction among other awards such as the JDH McFetridge Graduate Scholarship and the Andrew Stewart Memorial Graduate Prize for outstanding accomplishment and potential in pursuit of new knowledge. He received an MA from Lakehead University and another MA from California State University in Humanities in an interdisciplinary program. Dr. Abdul-Jabbar held a postdoctoral fellowship (also funded by SSHRC) at the University of Calgary. His research considers how intercultural communication resonates with educational practices and explores convergences of seemingly differing cultures with the aim of infusing intercultural dialogue into curriculum theorizing. Currently, he is an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Negotiating Diasporic Identity in Arab-Canadian Students: Double Consciousness, Belonging, and Radicalization (Palgrave, 2019). He has an upcoming book on Medieval Muslim philosophies and intercultural Education with Routledge.