 Another temporal issue that was clearly of interest to natural philosophers in Islamic lands concerned time’s topography: “Is it finite or infinite?” and “Is it ‘rectilinear’ or ‘cyclical’?” Among the Arabic-speaking philosophers, al-Kindī was virtually alone in affirming the finitude of time; most others philosophers argued that time must necessarily be infinite in that it could have no beginning. How various philosophers argued for this thesis reveals that both rectilinear and cyclical conceptions of time were present within the falsafa tradition, where Avicenna advocates a rectilinear conception of time and Averroes a cyclical conception of time.