al-Amiri

Abu al-Hasan Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Amiri was a philosopher of eastern Iran (Khurasan), counted among the last representatives of the philosophical tradition begun by al-Kindi — that is, falsafa, the strand of Islamic thought built on the Greek philosophical inheritance. He was born in Nishapur; his birth date is not securely recorded, though some scholarship gives an estimate of around 913 CE. By the standard account he studied under Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, himself a student of al-Kindi, which would make al-Amiri a second-generation heir of that school — though some scholars question whether the al-Balkhi connection is historical.

According to the biographical tradition, al-Amiri lived for a time in Rayy and travelled to Baghdad, then a leading intellectual center of the Islamic world. There the litterateur Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi recorded encounters with him — a contemporary report that is the main attested window onto this part of his life — and he is associated with the philosopher-historian Miskawayh; scholarship reports that his reception in Baghdad was cool. Later in life he is said to have settled in Bukhara, where he had access to the library of the Samanid court. He died in Nishapur, traditionally in 992 CE (381 AH).

Al-Amiri is best known for arguing that philosophy, rightly understood, does not contradict Islam but supports it, while holding that revealed truth ranks above reason. His surviving works include al-Amad ala al-abad (on the afterlife), al-I'lam bi-manaqib al-Islam (on the merits of Islam), and treatises on free will and destiny. His positions on reason and revelation were his own; later thinkers did not uniformly follow them.