Al-Kindī was the first thinker in the Islamic world to think of himself as a “philosopher” (in Arabic faylasūf), a proud heir to the wisdom of the Greeks. He played a crucial role in the transmission of Greek science and philosophy into Arabic, and was honored with the epithet “philosopher of the Arabs.” None of which prevented him from falling prey to a court intrigue during the reign of Mutawakkil in the middle of the ninth century CE. Thanks to the conniving of rival scholars, al-Kindī fell from favour and was beaten, and his library was confiscated. I like to think that in this testing moment, he was able to put into practice what he preached in a little treatise he composed called “How to Dispel Sorrow.”

Like just about everything al-Kindī wrote, the work is an original composition yet takes inspiration from Greek exemplars. There is an extended version of a metaphor that already appeared in the Stoic Epicetetus, which compares our life here on earth to a sojourn on land that interrupts a sea journey. Just as the voyager should be prepared to race back to the boat if called, so as to get the best seats, so the most favorable afterlife awaits those who are prepared for death. Another Greek thinker appears in the guise as an indomitable moral hero. This is Socrates, who is presented as having been invulnerable to grief and sadness because, as he explained, “I own nothing whose loss would sadden me.” This is the core of al-Kindī’s own advice on how to avoid grief. Sadness is the predictable result of forming an attachment to things that can be taken away from you. To push the point home al-Kindī tells the story of king Nero, who was so fond of a fabulous pavilion that he had it brought to him to enjoy on an island excursion. Unfortunately for Nero the boat carrying the pavilion sank on the way. Al-Kindī draws the following moral from this story: “if you want to have few misfortunes, you should have few possessions outside you.”