Greek Sages on the tawḥīd: Ancient Philosophy in Accord with the Islamic Doctrine of the Oneness of God

The aim of this article is to present and put into context a curious little treatise preserved in a Tehran manuscript with the intriguing title Nawādir min Kalām al-Falāsifa al-Muwaḥḥidīn wa-l-aʿlām al-māḍiyīn, The Most Precious Words of the Philosophers Professing the Oneness of God and of the Authorities of the Past.
The treatise contains a collection of sayings of the ancient Greeks like Hermes, Pythagoras and Plato and of the Alexandrians related to the central doctrine of Islam, the Oneness of God (tawḥīd). The material recalls the first Christian apologies addressing the pagans in an attempt to win them over to the new religion by demonstrating that already their authorities of the past had believed in only one God. The treatise is, however, strikingly different from other Arabic texts which link Greek philosophers to the tawḥīd as I want to show by excerpts from Christian apologies and the philosophical tradition of al-Kindī.