Ahmad ibn al-Mu‘tasim is the son of the ‘Abbasid caliph who reigned from 833–842 AD, so this gives us a fairly reliable date for the production of the Theology, or at least for al-Kindi’s ‘correction’ of it. This date may in fact apply to the whole original Arabic translation of Plotinus. It is worth noting that this makes the Greek exemplar on which the translation was based earlier than our oldest Greek manuscripts of the Enneads. In fact we know that the Greek basis of the Arabic version represented an independent branch of the tradition, since all our Greek manuscripts lack a section (at Enn. IV.7.8) from the Enneads that is transmitted indirectly by Eusebius, but is found in the Arabic translation (in chapter three of the Theology).