The Arabic word هيولى was domesticated from ancient Greek by the translators, many of whom were Christian or Jewish, who were the real engine behind the efflorescence of "Islamic" philosophy during the Abbasi period and beyond. Thus furnished, the term was used by Muslim philospohers, many of whom were non-Arabs.

The term هيولى (sometimes also written هيولا) corresponded to the Greek term "hyle" (pronounced HULEH), which orginally meant "wood" or "forest," but was used by the ancient Greek philosophsers, beginning with the Ionians in the sense of "matter." Please notice, that matter here is not coterminous with our common concept of matter, i.e., something "brute, inorganic, passive, mindless" (I am plagiarizing these adjectives from A. Emmon's essay on "Matter" in Volume V of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy). In philosophical discourse, the term is used in a different sense. In the words of the American Heritage Dictionary, matter is "that which is in itself undifferentiated and formless and which, as the subject of change and development, receives form and becomes substance." (Notice that the International Journal of the Philosophy of Chemistry is named HYLE).

Thus understood, matter, form, and substance make up three of the core concepts in all metaphysical thinking. Plato and Aristotle are credited with giving shape to the perennial debates regarding these concepts. The Muslim philosphers from Al-Kindi to Mulla Sadra kept the momentum of philosophical enquiry about these concepts until the wane of Islamic civilization and the resurrection of secular science and philosophy in Europe at the time of Hobbes and Descartes.

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Note added at 2003-10-18 20:28:11 (GMT)
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In Modern Standard Arabic, whenever we translate the non-philosophical term \"matter,\" we use the word مادة. But in philosophical discourse, the term مادة is reserved for \"substance,\" which is thought of as composed of matter and form

هيولى وصورة

This can get pretty hairy for most people, because most Arabic writers, especially those writing about philosophy today, are not careful enough to distinguish between \"substance\" and \"matter.\"

A similar confusion took place in the middle ages when Arab translators were not careful enough to distinguish between \"being\" and \"existence.\" It is interesting that this confusion led to the rise of the idea of \"existence\" as developed by Ibn Sina and Ibn Rush, who modestly thought that they were only expounding the ideas of Aristotle, when in fact they were breaking new philosophical grounds. This led to further developments in Europe by St. Thomas Aquinas, on the one hand, and, later, by Muslim philosophers, such as Mulla Sadra, on the other hand. Sometimes an error in translation is all you need to push philosophy forward.