Al-Farabi

Muslim scholar Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Fārābī[1]
Title	The Second Teacher[2]
Born	c. 872[2] Fārāb on the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) in modern Kazakhstan or Faryāb in Khorāsān (modern day Afghanistan).[1]
Died	c. 950[2] Damascus[3]
Ethnicity	Persian or Turkic
Era	Islamic Golden Age
Religion	Islam
Main interest(s)	Metaphysics, Political philosophy, law, Logic, Music, Science, Ethics, Mysticism,[2] Epistemology
Notable work(s)	kitāb al-mūsīqī al-kabīr ("The Great Book Of Music"), ārā ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila ("The Virtuous City"), kitāb iḥṣāʾ al-ʿulūm ("On The Introduction Of Knowledge"), kitāb iḥṣāʾ al-īqā'āt ("Classification Of Rhythms")[2]
Influenced by Aristotle, Plato, Porphyry, Ptolemy,[3] Al-Kindi
Influenced Avicenna, Yahya ibn Adi, Abu Sulayman Sijistani, Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, Ibn Bajjah, Mulla Sadra,[2] Al Amiri, Averroes, Maimonides and Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī, Leo Strauss[4]

Al-Farabi (/ˌælfəˈrɑːbi/; Persian: ابونصر محمد بن محمد فارابی‎‎ Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Fārābī;^[1] for other recorded variants of his name see below) , known in the West as Alpharabius^[5] (c. 872^[2] in Fārāb^[3] – between 14 December, 950 and 12 January, 951 in Damascus),^[3] was a renowned philosopher and jurist who wrote in the fields of political philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and logic. He was also a scientist, cosmologist, mathematician and music scholar.^[6]

Al-Farabi is credited with preserving the original Greek texts during the Middle Ages because of his commentaries and treaties, and influencing many prominent philosophers, like Avicenna and Maimonides. Through his works, he became well-known in the East as well as the West.

Biography

The existing variations in the basic accounts of al-Farabi's origins and pedigree indicate that they were not recorded during his lifetime or soon thereafter by anyone with concrete information, but were based on hearsay or guesses (as is the case with other contemporaries of al-Farabi).^[1] The sources for his life are scant which makes the reconstruction of his biography beyond a mere outline nearly impossible.^[1] The earliest and more reliable sources, i.e., those composed before the 6th/12th century, that are extant today are so few as to indicate that no one among Fārābī’s successors and their followers, or even unrelated scholars, undertook to write his full biography, a neglect that has to be taken into consideration in assessing his immediate impact.^[1] The sources prior to the 6th/12th century consist of: (1) an autobiographical passage by Farabi, preserved by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa. In this passage, Farabi traces the transmission of the instruction of logic and philosophy from antiquity to his days. (2) Reports by Al-Masudi, Ibn al-Nadim and Ibn Hawqal as well as by Said Al-Andalusi (d. 1070), who devoted a biography to him.

When major Arabic biographers decided to write comprehensive entries on Farabi in the 6th-7th/12th-13th centuries, there was very little specific information on hand; this allowed for their acceptance of invented stories about his life which range from benign extrapolation on the basis of some known details to tendentious reconstructions and legends.^[1] Most modern biographies of the philosopher present various combinations of elements drawn at will from this concocted material.^[1] The sources from the 6th/12th century and later consist essentially of three biographical entries, all other extant reports on Farabi being either dependent on them or even later fabrications:^[1] 1) the Syrian tradition represented by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa.^[1] 2) The Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-anbāʾ abnāʾ az-zamān (“Deaths of Eminent Men and History of the Sons of the Epoch”; trans. by Baron de Slane, Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary, 1842–74) compiled by Ibn Khallikān.^[1] 3) the scanty and legendary Eastern tradition, represented by Ẓahīr-al-Dīn Bayhaqī.^[1]

From incidental accounts it is known that he spent significant time in Baghdad with Christian scholars including the cleric Yuhanna ibn Haylan, Yahya ibn Adi, and Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Baghdadi. He later spent time in Damascus, Syria and Egypt before returning to Damascus where he died in 950-1.^[7]

Name

His name was Abū Naṣr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Farabi, as all sources, and especially the earliest and most reliable, Al-Masudi, agree.^[1] In some manuscripts of Fārābī’s works, which must reflect the reading of their ultimate archetypes from his time, his full name appears as Abū Naṣr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ṭarḵānī, i.e., the element Ṭarḵān appears in a nisba (family surname or attributive title).^[1] Moreover, if the name of Farabi’s grandfather was not known among his contemporaries and immediately succeeding generations, it is all the more surprising to see in the later sources the appearance of yet another name from his pedigree, Awzalaḡ.^[1] This appears as the name of the grandfather in Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa and of the great-grandfather in Ibn Khallikan. Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa is the first source to list this name which, as Ibn Khallikān explicitly specifies later, is so to be pronounced as Awzalaḡ.^[1] In modern Turkish scholarship and some other sources, the pronunciation is given as Uzluḡ rather than Awzalaḡ, without any explanation.^[1]

Birthplace

His birthplace is Fārāb on the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) in modern Kazakhstan ^[1] or maybe Fāryāb in Greater Khorasan (modern day Afghanistan). The older Persian^[1] Pārāb (in Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam) or Fāryāb (also Pāryāb), is a common Persian toponym meaning “lands irrigated by diversion of river water”.^[8][9] By the 13th century, Fārāb on the Jaxartes was known as Otrār.^[10]

Origin

There is a difference of opinion on the ethnic background of Farabi.^[1][11][12] According to Dimitri Gutas, "[...] ultimately pointless as the quest for Farabi’s ethnic origins might be, the fact remains that we do not have sufficient evidence to decide the matter [...]"^[1] The Cambridge companion to Arabic philosophy also states that "[...] these biographical facts are paltry in the extreme but we must resist the urge to embellish them with fanciful stories, as the medieval biographers did, or engage in idle speculation about al-Farabi’s ethnicity or religious affiliation on the basis of contrived interpretations of his works, as many modern scholars have done."^[13] According to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Thought "[...] because the origins of al-Farabi were not recorded during his lifetime or soon after his death in 950 C.E. by anyone with concrete information, accounts of his pedigree and place of birth have been based on hearsay [...]".^[14]

Iranian origin theory

Medieval Arab historian Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa (died in 1269)—al-Farabi's oldest biographer—mentions in his ʿOyūn that al-Farabi's father was of Persian descent.^[1][15] Al-Shahrazūrī who lived around 1288 A.D. and has written an early biography also states that Farabi hailed from a Persian family.^[16][17] According to Majid Fakhry, an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, Farabi's father "was an army captain of Persian extraction."^[18] As noted by Dimitri Gutas, Farabi has in a number of his works references and glosses in Persian and Sogdian (and even Greek but not Turkish).^[1][19] Sogdian has also been suggested as his native language^[20] and the language of the inhabitants of Fārāb.^[21] Muhammad Javad Mashkoor argues for an Iranian-speaking Central Asian origin.^[22] A Persian origin has been discussed by other sources as well.^[23]

Turkic origin theory

The oldest known reference to a Turkic origin is given by the medieval historian Ibn Khallikān (died in 1282), who in his work Wafayāt (completed in 669/1271) states that Farabi was born in the small village of Wasij near Fārāb (in what is today Otrar, Kazakhstan) of Turkic parents. Based on this account, some modern scholars say he is of Turkic origin.^{[24][25][26][27][28][29]} Dimitri Gutas, an American Arabist of Greek origin, criticizes this, saying that Ibn Khallikān's account is aimed at the earlier historical accounts by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa, and serves the purpose to "prove" a Turkic origin for al-Farabi, for instance by mentioning the additional nisba (surname) "al-Turk" (arab. "the Turk")—a nisba Farabi never had.^[1] However, Abu al-Fedā', who copied Ibn Ḵhallekān, corrected this and changed al-Torkī to the descriptive statement "wa-kāna rajolan torkīyan", meaning "he was a Turkish man."^[1] In this regard, Oxford professor C.E. Bosworth notes that "great figures [such] as al-Farabi, al-Biruni, and ibn Sina have been attached by over enthusiastic Turkish scholars to their race".^[30]

Life and education

Al-Farabi spent almost his entire life in Baghdad. In the auto-biographical passage about the appearance of philosophy preserved by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa, Farabi has stated that he had studied logic,medicine and sociology with Yūḥannā b. Ḥaylān up to and including Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, i.e., according to the order of the books studied in the curriculum, Fārābī said that he studied Porphyry’s Eisagoge and Aristotle’s Categories, De Interpretatione, Prior and Posterior Analytics. His teacher, Yūḥannā b. Ḥaylān, was a Christian cleric who abandoned lay interests and engaged in his ecclesiastical duties, as Fārābī reports. His studies of Aristotelian logic with Yūḥannā in all probability took place in Baghdad, where Al-Masudi tells us Yūḥannā died during the caliphate of al-Moqtader (295-320/908-32).^[1] He was in Baghdad at least until the end of September 942 as we learn from notes in some manuscripts of his Mabādeʾ ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāżela, he had started to compose the book in Baghdad at that time and then left and went to Syria.^[1] He finished the book in Damascus the following year (331), i.e., by September 943).^[1] He also lived and taught for some time in Aleppo. Later on Farabi visited Egypt; and complete six sections summarizing the book Mabādeʾ in Egypt in 337/July 948-June 949.^[1] He returned from Egypt to Syria. Al-Masudi writing barely five years after the fact (955-6, the date of the composition of the Tanbīh), says that he died in Damascus in Rajab 339 (between 14 December 950 and 12 January 951).^[1] In Syria, he was supported and glorified by Sayf al-Dawla, the Hamdanid ruler of Syria.

Farabi's religious belief

There are many different opinions on what Al-Farabi's religious beliefs are. On one hand, Corbin believes that according to evidence, there are many similarities between prophetic philosophy and the political philosophy of Al-Farabi, including some prophetic Shiite philosophy. The immigration of Al-Farabi to Aleppo is also of interest because the ruling government there was the Shiite Hamdani dynasty. To some there is no doubt that Al-Farabi was a Shiite philosopher.^[31] Najjar Fauzi also refers to the point that Al-Farabi may be Shiite because his political philosophy seems to influenced by Shiite sects.^[32] But on the other hand, somebody like Majid Fakhry insist that Al-Farabi was Sunni. According to him, the term of Imam was not used among Shiite, and it was also common in usage between Sunnis. Fakhry also believed that since that Farabi had not committed to any dissimulation, then he was not Shiite.^[33]

Works and contributions

Farabi made contributions to the fields of logic, mathematics, music, philosophy, psychology, and education.

Alchemy

Al-Farabi wrote: The Necessity of the Art of the Elixir^[34]

Logic

Though he was mainly an Aristotelian logician, he included a number of non-Aristotelian elements in his works. He discussed the topics of future contingents, the number and relation of the categories, the relation between logic and grammar, and non-Aristotelian forms of inference.^[35] He is also credited for categorizing logic into two separate groups, the first being "idea" and the second being "proof".

Al-Farabi also considered the theories of conditional syllogisms and analogical inference, which were part of the Stoic tradition of logic rather than the Aristotelian.^[36] Another addition al-Farabi made to the Aristotelian tradition was his introduction of the concept of poetic syllogism in a commentary on Aristotle's Poetics.^[37]

Music

Al-Farabi wrote a book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqa (The Book of Music). In it, he presents philosophical principles about music, its cosmic qualities, and its influences.

He also wrote a treatise on the Meanings of the Intellect, which dealt with music therapy and discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul.^[38]

Philosophy

As a philosopher, Al-Farabi was a founder of his own school of early Islamic philosophy known as "Farabism" or "Alfarabism", though it was later overshadowed by Avicennism. Al-Farabi's school of philosophy "breaks with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle [... and ...] moves from metaphysics to methodology, a move that anticipates modernity", and "at the level of philosophy, Alfarabi unites theory and practice [... and] in the sphere of the political he liberates practice from theory". His Neoplatonic theology is also more than just metaphysics as rhetoric. In his attempt to think through the nature of a First Cause, Alfarabi discovers the limits of human knowledge".^[39]

Al-Farabi had great influence on science and philosophy for several centuries,^[40] and was widely considered second only to Aristotle in knowledge (alluded to by his title of "the Second Teacher") in his time. His work, aimed at synthesis of philosophy and Sufism, paved the way for the work of Ibn Sina (Avicenna).^[41]

Al-Farabi also wrote a commentary on Aristotle's work, and one of his most notable works is Al-Madina al-Fadila (اراء اهل المدينة الفاضلة و مضاداتها) where he theorized an ideal state as in Plato's The Republic.^[42] Al-Farabi represented religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state. Al-Farabi incorporated the Platonic view, drawing a parallel from within the Islamic context, in that he regarded the ideal state to be ruled by the prophet-imam, instead of the philosopher-king envisaged by Plato. Al-Farabi argued that the ideal state was the city-state of Medina when it was governed by the prophet Muhammad as its head of state, as he was in direct communion with Allah whose law was revealed to him.

Physics

Al-Farabi wrote a short treatise "On Vacuum", where he thought about the nature of the existence of void.^[42] He may have carried out the first experiments concerning the existence of vacuum, in which he investigated handheld plungers in water.^[43] He concluded that air's volume can expand to fill available space, and he suggested that the concept of perfect vacuum was incoherent.^[42]

Psychology

Wrote Social Psychology and Principles of the Opinions of the Citizens of the Virtuous City, which were the first treatises to deal with social psychology. He stated that "an isolated individual could not achieve all the perfections by himself, without the aid of other individuals," and that it is the "innate disposition of every man to join another human being or other men in the labor he ought to perform." He concluded that to "achieve what he can of that perfection, every man needs to stay in the neighborhood of others and associate with them."^[38]

In his treatise On the Cause of Dreams, which appeared as chapter 24 of his Principles of the Opinions of the Citizens of the Ideal City, he distinguished between dream interpretation and the nature and causes of dreams.^[38]

Philosophical thought

Influences

The main influence on al-Farabi's philosophy was the neo-Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria. A prolific writer, he is credited with over one hundred works.^[44] Amongst these are a number of prolegomena to philosophy, commentaries on important Aristotelian works (such as the Nicomachean Ethics) as well as his own works. His ideas are marked by their coherency, despite drawing together of many different philosophical disciplines and traditions. Some other significant influences on his work were the planetary model of Ptolemy and elements of Neo-Platonism,^[45] particularly metaphysics and practical (or political) philosophy (which bears more resemblance to Plato's Republic than Aristotle's Politics).^[46]

Al-Farabi, Aristotle, Maimonides

In the handing down of Aristotle’s thought to the Christian west in the middle ages, al-Farabi played an essential part as appears in the translation of Farabi’s Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle’s de Interpretatione that F.W. Zimmermann published in 1981. Farabi had a great influence on Maimonides, the most important Jewish thinker of the middle ages. Maimonides wrote in Arabic a Treatise on logic, the celebrated Maqala fi sina at al-mantiq. In a wonderfully concise way, the work treats of the essentials of Aristotelian logic in the light of comments made by the Persian philosophers: Avicenna and above all al-Farabi. To use Maimonides’ words, if Aristotle is the First Master the second one is undoubtedly Farabi. Rémi Brague in his book devoted to the Treatise stresses the fact that Farabi is the only thinker mentioned therein.

Al-Farabi as well as Ibn Sina and Averroes have been recognized as Peripatetics (al-Mashsha’iyun) or rationalists (Estedlaliun) among Muslims.^[47][48][49] However, he tried to gather the ideas of Plato and Aristotle in his book "The gathering of the ideas of the two philosophers".^[50]

According to Adamson, his work was singularly directed towards the goal of simultaneously reviving and reinventing the Alexandrian philosophical tradition, to which his Christian teacher, Yuhanna bin Haylan belonged. His success should be measured by the honorific title of "the second master" of philosophy (Aristotle being the first), by which he was known.^[51] Interestingly, Adamson also says that he does not make any reference to the ideas of either al-Kindi or his contemporary, Abu Bakr al-Razi, which clearly indicates that he did not consider their approach to Philosophy as a correct or viable one.^[52]

Thought

Metaphysics and cosmology

In contrast to al-Kindi, who considered the subject of metaphysics to be God, al-Farabi believed that it was concerned primarily with being qua being (that is, being in and of itself), and this is related to God only to the extent that God is a principle of absolute being. Al-Kindi's view was, however, a common misconception regarding Greek philosophy amongst Muslim intellectuals at the time, and it was for this reason that Avicenna remarked that he did not understand Aristotle's Metaphysics properly until he had read a prolegomenon written by al-Farabi.^[53]

Al-Farabi's cosmology is essentially based upon three pillars: Aristotelian metaphysics of causation, highly developed Plotinian emanational cosmology and the Ptolemaic astronomy.^[54] In his model, the universe is viewed as a number of concentric circles; the outermost sphere or "first heaven", the sphere of fixed stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and finally, the Moon. At the centre of these concentric circles is the sub-lunar realm which contains the material world.^[55] Each of these circles represent the domain of the secondary intelligences (symbolized by the celestial bodies themselves), which act as causal intermediaries between the First Cause (in this case, God) and the material world. Furthermore these are said to have emanated from God, who is both their formal and efficient cause.

The process of emanation begins (metaphysically, not temporally) with the First Cause, whose principal activity is self-contemplation. And it is this intellectual activity that underlies its role in the creation of the universe. The First Cause, by thinking of itself, "overflows" and the incorporeal entity of the second intellect "emanates" from it. Like its predecessor, the second intellect also thinks about itself, and thereby brings its celestial sphere (in this case, the sphere of fixed stars) into being, but in addition to this it must also contemplate upon the First Cause, and this causes the "emanation" of the next intellect. The cascade of emanation continues until it reaches the tenth intellect, beneath which is the material world. And as each intellect must contemplate both itself and an increasing number of predecessors, each succeeding level of existence becomes more and more complex. It should be noted that this process is based upon necessity as opposed to will. In other words, God does not have a choice whether or not to create the universe, but by virtue of His own existence, He causes it to be. This view also suggests that the universe is eternal, and both of these points were criticized by al-Ghazzali in his attack on the philosophers^[56][57]

In his discussion of the First Cause (or God), al-Farabi relies heavily on negative theology. He says that it cannot be known by intellectual means, such as dialectical division or definition, because the terms used in these processes to define a thing constitute its substance. Therefore if one was to define the First Cause, each of the terms used would actually constitute a part of its substance and therefore behave as a cause for its existence, which is impossible as the First Cause is uncaused; it exists without being caused. Equally, he says it cannot be known according to genus and differentia, as its substance and existence are different from all others, and therefore it has no category to which it belongs. If this were the case, then it would not be the First Cause, because something would be prior in existence to it, which is also impossible. This would suggest that the more philosophically simple a thing is, the more perfect it is. And based on this observation, Adamson says it is possible to see the entire hierarchy of al-Farabi's cosmology according to classification into genus and species. Each succeeding level in this structure has as its principal qualities multiplicity and deficiency, and it is this ever-increasing complexity that typifies the material world.^[58]

Epistemology and eschatology

Human beings are unique in al-Farabi's vision of the universe because they stand between two worlds: the "higher", immaterial world of the celestial intellects and universal intelligibles, and the "lower", material world of generation and decay; they inhabit a physical body, and so belong to the "lower" world, but they also have a rational capacity, which connects them to the "higher" realm. Each level of existence in al-Farabi's cosmology is characterized by its movement towards perfection, which is to become like the First Cause; a perfect intellect. Human perfection (or "happiness"), then, is equated with constant intellection and contemplation.^[59]

Al-Farabi divides intellect into four categories: potential, actual, acquired and the Agent. The first three are the different states of the human intellect and the fourth is the Tenth Intellect (the moon) in his emanational cosmology. The potential intellect represents the capacity to think, which is shared by all human beings, and the actual intellect is an intellect engaged in the act of thinking. By thinking, al-Farabi means abstracting universal intelligibles from the sensory forms of objects which have been apprehended and retained in the individual's imagination.^[60]

This motion from potentiality to actuality requires the Agent Intellect to act upon the retained sensory forms; just as the Sun illuminates the physical world to allow us to see, the Agent Intellect illuminates the world of intelligibles to allow us to think.^[61] This illumination removes all accident (such as time, place, quality) and physicality from them, converting them into primary intelligibles, which are logical principles such as "the whole is greater than the part". The human intellect, by its act of intellection, passes from potentiality to actuality, and as it gradually comprehends these intelligibles, it is identified with them (as according to Aristotle, by knowing something, the intellect becomes like it).^[62] Because the Agent Intellect knows all of the intelligibles, this means that when the human intellect knows all of them, it becomes associated with the Agent Intellect's perfection and is known as the acquired Intellect.^[63]

While this process seems mechanical, leaving little room for human choice or volition, Reisman says that al-Farabi is committed to human voluntarism.^[62] This takes place when man, based on the knowledge he has acquired, decides whether to direct himself towards virtuous or unvirtuous activities, and thereby decides whether or not to seek true happiness. And it is by choosing what is ethical and contemplating about what constitutes the nature of ethics, that the actual intellect can become "like" the active intellect, thereby attaining perfection. It is only by this process that a human soul may survive death, and live on in the afterlife.^[61][64]

According to al-Farabi, the afterlife is not the personal experience commonly conceived of by religious traditions such as Islam and Christianity. Any individual or distinguishing features of the soul are annihilated after the death of the body; only the rational faculty survives (and then, only if it has attained perfection), which becomes one with all other rational souls within the agent intellect and enters a realm of pure intelligence.^[63] Henry Corbin compares this eschatology with that of the Ismaili Neo-Platonists, for whom this process initiated the next grand cycle of the universe.^[65] However, Deborah Black mentions we have cause to be skeptical as to whether this was the mature and developed view of al-Farabi, as later thinkers such as Ibn Tufayl, Averroes and Ibn Bajjah would assert that he repudiated this view in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, which has been lost to modern experts.^[63]

Psychology, the soul and prophetic knowledge

In his treatment of the human soul, al-Farabi draws on a basic Aristotelian outline, which is informed by the commentaries of later Greek thinkers. He says it is composed of four faculties: The appetitive (the desire for, or aversion to an object of sense), the sensitive (the perception by the senses of corporeal substances), the imaginative (the faculty which retains images of sensible objects after they have been perceived, and then separates and combines them for a number of ends), and the rational, which is the faculty of intellection.^[66] It is the last of these which is unique to human beings and distinguishes them from plants and animals. It is also the only part of the soul to survive the death of the body. Noticeably absent from these scheme are internal senses, such as common sense, which would be discussed by later philosophers such as Avicenna and Averroes.^[67][68]

Special attention must be given to al-Farabi's treatment of the soul's imaginative faculty, which is essential to his interpretation of prophethood and prophetic knowledge. In addition to its ability to retain and manipulate sensible images of objects, he gives the imagination the function of imitation. By this he means the capacity to represent an object with an image other than its own. In other words, to imitate "x" is to imagine "x" by associating it with sensible qualities that do not describe its own appearance. This extends the representative ability of the imagination beyond sensible forms and to include temperaments, emotions, desires and even immaterial intelligibles or abstract universals, as happens when, for example, one associates "evil" with "darkness".^[69][70] The prophet, in addition to his own intellectual capacity, has a very strong imaginative faculty, which allows him to receive an overflow of intelligibles from the agent intellect (the tenth intellect in the emanational cosmology). These intelligibles are then associated with symbols and images, which allow him to communicate abstract truths in a way that can be understood by ordinary people. Therefore what makes prophetic knowledge unique is not its content, which is also accessible to philosophers through demonstration and intellection, but rather the form that it is given by the prophet's imagination.^[71][72]

Practical philosophy (ethics and politics)

The practical application of philosophy is a major concern expressed by al-Farabi in many of his works, and while the majority of his philosophical output has been influenced by Aristotelian thought, his practical philosophy is unmistakably based on that of Plato.^[73] In a similar manner to Plato's Republic, al-Farabi emphasizes that philosophy is both a theoretical and practical discipline; labeling those philosophers who do not apply their erudition to practical pursuits as "futile philosophers". The ideal society, he says, is one directed towards the realization of "true happiness" (which can be taken to mean philosophical enlightenment) and as such, the ideal philosopher must hone all the necessary arts of rhetoric and poetics to communicate abstract truths to the ordinary people, as well as having achieved enlightenment himself.^[74] Al-Farabi compares the philosopher's role in relation to society with a physician in relation to the body; the body's health is affected by the "balance of its humours" just as the city is determined by the moral habits of its people. The philosopher's duty, he says, is to establish a "virtuous" society by healing the souls of the people, establishing justice and guiding them towards "true happiness".^[75]

Of course, al-Farabi realizes that such a society is rare and requires a very specific set of historical circumstances to be realized, which means very few societies could ever attain this goal. He divides those "vicious" societies, which have fallen short of the ideal "virtuous" society, into three categories: ignorant, wicked and errant. Ignorant societies have, for whatever reason, failed to comprehend the purpose of human existence, and have supplanted the pursuit of happiness for another (inferior) goal, whether this be wealth, sensual gratification or power. It is interesting to note that democratic societies also fall into this category, as they too lack any guiding principle. Both wicked and errant societies have understood the true human end, but they have failed to follow it. The former because they have willfully abandoned it, and the latter because their leaders have deceived and misguided them. Al-Farabi also makes mention of "weeds" in the virtuous society; those people who try to undermine its progress towards the true human end.^[76] The best known Arabic source for al-Farabi's political philosophy is his work titled, al-Madina al-fadila (The Virtuous City).

Whether or not al-Farabi actually intended to outline a political programme in his writings remains a matter of dispute amongst academics. Henry Corbin, who considers al-Farabi to be a crypto-Shi'ite, says that his ideas should be understood as a "prophetic philosophy" instead of being interpreted politically.^[77] On the other hand, Charles Butterworth contends that nowhere in his work does al-Farabi speak of a prophet-legislator or revelation (even the word philosophy is scarcely mentioned), and the main discussion that takes place concerns the positions of "king" and "statesmen".^[78] Occupying a middle position is David Reisman, who like Corbin believes that al-Farabi did not want to expound a political doctrine (although he does not go so far to attribute it to Islamic Gnosticism either). He argues that al-Farabi was using different types of society as examples, in the context of an ethical discussion, to show what effect correct or incorrect thinking could have.^[79] Lastly, Joshua Parens argues that al-Farabi was slyly asserting that a pan-Islamic society could not be made, by using reason to show how many conditions (such as moral and deliberative virtue) would have to be met, thus leading the reader to conclude that humans are not fit for such a society.^[80] Some other authors like Mykhaylo Yakubovych attest that for al-Farabi religion (milla) and philosophy (falsafa) constituted the same praxeological value (i.e. basis for amal al-fadhil—"virtuous deed"), while its epistemological level (ilm—"knowledge") was different.^[81]

See also

• List of Muslim scientists
• List of modern-day Muslim scholars of Islam
• List of Iranian scholars
• Islamic mythology

Notes

References

Primary Sources (Fārābī) in translation

English

• Al-Farabi's Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle's De interpretatione, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Short Commentary on Aristotle's Prior Analytics, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963.
• Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.
• Alfarabi, the Political Writings. Selected Aphorisms and Other Texts, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
• Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, translated and with an introduction by Muhsin Mahdi, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
• Fusul al-Madani: Aphorisms of the Statesman Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• "Al-Farabi's Long Commentary on Aristotle's Categoriae in Hebrew and Arabic", In Studies in Arabic and Islamic Culture, Vol. II, edited by Abrahamov, Binyamin. Ramat: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006.
• Texts translated by D. M. Dunlop:
  • "The Existence and Definition of Philosophy. From an Arabic text ascribed to al-Farabi", Iraq, 1951, pp. 76–93).
  • "Al-Farabi's Aphorisms of the Statesman", Iraq, 1952, pp. 93–117.
  • "Al-Farabi's Introductory Sections on Logic", The Islamic Quarterly, 1955, pp. 264–282.
  • "Al-Farabi's Eisagoge", The Islamic Quarterly, 1956, pp. 117–138.
  • "Al-Farabi's Introductory Risalah on Logic", The Islamic Quarterly, 1956, pp. 224–235.
  • "Al-Farabi's Paraphrase of the Categories of Aristotle [Part 1]", The Islamic Quarterly, 1957, pp. 168–197.
  • "Al-Farabi's Paraphrase of the Categories of Aristotle [Part 2]", The Islamic Quarterly, 1959, pp. 21–54.

French

• Le Livre du régime politique, introduction, traduction et commentaire de Philippe Vallat, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012.

Spanish

• Catálogo De Las Ciencias, Madrid: Imp. de Estanislao Maestre, 1932.

Secondary Sources

• Deborah Black. Al-Farabi in Leaman, O & Nasr, H (2001). History of Islamic Philosophy. London: Routledge.
• Deborah Black. Psychology: Soul and Intellect in Adamson, P and Taylor, R. (2005). The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Charles Butterworth. Ethical and Political Philosophy in Adamson, P and Taylor, R. (2005). The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Corbin, Henry; Hossein Nasr; Utman Yahya (1993). History of Islamic Philosophy. Keagan Paul International. ISBN 978-0-7103-0416-2. 
• Majid Fakhry, Al-Farabi, Founder of Islamic Neoplatonism: His Life, Works, and Influence, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, (2002), ISBN 1-85168-302-X. Trad. esp.: "Alfarabi y la fundación de la filosofía política islámica", trad R. Ramón Guerrero, Barcelona, Herder, 2003.
• Rafael Ramón Guerrero. “Apuntes biográficos de al-Fârâbî según sus vidas árabes”, in Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 14 (2003) 231-238.
• Christoph Marcinkowski, "A Biographical Note on Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) and an English Translation of his Annotations to Al-Farabi's Isagoge". Iqbal Review (Lahore, Pakistan), vol. 43, no 2 (April 2002), pp 83–99.
• Monteil Jean-François, “La transmission d’Aristote par les Arabes à la chrétienté occidentale: une trouvaille relative au De Interpretatione,” Revista Española de Filosofia Medieval 11: 181-195 (2004).
• David Reisman. Al-Farabi and the Philosophical Curriculum In Adamson, P & Taylor, R. (2005). The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Habib Hassan Touma (1996). The Music of the Arabs, trans. Laurie Schwartz. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. ISBN 978-0-931340-88-8

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Al-Farabi

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Al-Farabi.

• Al-Farabi's Psychology and Epistemology entry by Luis Xavier López-Farjeat in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Dhanani, Alnoor (2007). "Fārābī: Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Tarkhān al‐Fārābī". In Thomas Hockey; et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. New York: Springer. pp. 356–7. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0.  (PDF version)
• Mahdi, Muhsin (2008) [1970-80]. "Al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad Ibn Muḥammad Ibn Ṭarkhān Ibn Awzalagh". Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Encyclopedia.com.  External link in |= (help)
• al-Farabi at Britannica
• Abu Nasr al-Farabi at muslimphilosophy.com
• Review (fr) of Rescher's Al-Fârâbî : An Annotated Bibliography (Pitt. Univ. Press, 1962) at Persée.fr.*al-Fārābi—brief introduction by Peter J. King
• The Philosophy of Alfarabi and Its Influence on Medieval Thought (1947)
• al-madina al-fadila (The Virtuous City). German introduction with Arabic text.
• Article discussing Soghdian origin for Farabi PDF version
• ALFARABI-Trinity College
• ALFARABI-Unesco
• Al Farabi

People of Khorasan Scientists: Abu Ma'shar Abu Wafa Abu Zayd Balkhi Alfraganus Ali Qushji Avicenna Birjandi Biruni Hāsib Marwazī Ibn Hayyān Khāzin Khāzinī Khujandi Khwarizmi Nasawi Nasir al-Din Tusi Omar Khayyám Sharaf al-Din Tusi Sijzi Philosophers: Ghazali Amiri Avicenna Farabi Nasir Khusraw Qushayri Sejestani Shahrastani Islamic Scholars: Abu Dawood Abu Hanifa Ahmad ibn Hanbal Ansari Baghavi Bayhaqi Bukhari Hākim Nishapuri Juwayni Marghinani Maturidi Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj Nishapuri Nasafi Nasa'i Qushayri Razi Shaykh Tusi Taftazani Tirmidhi Zamakhshari Poets and artists: Abu al-Khair Attar Behzad Daqiqi Ferdowsi Jami Rabi'a Balkhi Rudaki Rumi Sanā'ī Hasanoglu Historians and political figures: Abul-Fazl Bayhaqi Abu Muslim Abu Saʿīd Gardēzī Ali Sher Nava'i Ata al-Mulk Juvayni Aufi Muhammad Bal'ami Goharshad Begum Ibn Khordadbeh Khalid ibn Barmak Nizam al-Mulk Tahir ibn Husayn Yahya Barmaki Ahmad ibn Nizam al-Mulk Shihab al-Nasawi

Islamic philosophy Fields Alchemy Aqidah (theology) 'Aql (intellect) Cosmology astrology medieval astronomy Eschatology Ethics Kalam (dialectic) Fiqh (jurisprudence) Logic Metaphysics Natural philosophy (physics) Peace Madrasah (education) Medieval science Medieval psychology Sufism (mysticism) Schools Early Farabism Avicennism Averroism Illuminationism Sufi cosmology metaphysics Transcendent theosophy Traditionalist Contemporary Concepts ʻAṣabīya Ḥāl Iʻjaz ʼIjtihād ʻlm ʻIrfān Ijmāʿ Maslaha Nafs Qadar Qiyās Shūrā Tawḥīd Ummah   Philosophers by century (CE) 9th–10th Al-Kindi Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri Zakariya Razi Apharabius Abu Hatim al-Razi Al Amiri Ikhwan al-Safa Abu Sulayman Sijistani Ibn Masarrah Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani 11th Al-Ghazali Ibn Miskawayh Avicenna Ibn Hazm Bahmanyār Mu'ayyad fi'l-Din al-Shirazi Nasir Khusraw 12th Abu'l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī Afdal al-Din Kashani Ahi Evren Ahmad Yasavi Ayn-al-Quzat Averroes Ibn Tufail Omar Khayyám Suhrawardi Shams Tabrizi 13th Hajji Bektash Wali Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi Ibn Sab’in Ibn Arabi al-Abharī Nasir al-Din Tusi Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi 14th–16th Ibn Khaldun Yunus Emre Hajji Bayram Jalaladdin Davani Sadr ad-Din Dashtaki Aziz Mahmud Hudayi Qadi Mir Husayn al-Maybudi Mahmud Shabistari Sayyid Haydar Amuli Dawūd al-Qayṣarī Jami 17th–19th Mir Damad Mir Fendereski Mulla Sadra Mohsen Fayz Kashani Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji Mujaddid Alf-i-Sani Rajab Ali Tabrizi Qazi Sa’id Qumi Shah Waliullah Hādī Sabzavārī 20th–present Muhammad Husayn Tabatabaei Muhammad Iqbal Gohar Shahi Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr René Guénon Frithjof Schuon Martin Lings Hossein Nasr Naquib al-Attas Abdolkarim Soroush Gholamhossein Ebrahimi Dinani Taha Abdurrahman Mohammed Abed al-Jabri Mohammed Arkoun Fouad Zakariyya Reza Davari Ardakani Ahmad Fardid Mostafa Malekian Hasanzadeh Amoli Javadi Amoli Partawi Shah

Alchemy and chemistry in medieval Islam Alchemists 7th century Khālid ibn Yazīd 8th century Harbi al-Himyari Ja'far al-Sadiq 9th century Jābir ibn Hayyān Abbas ibn Firnas Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri Ziryab 10th century Ibn Wahshiyya Muhammed ibn Umail al-Tamimi Al-Razi Al-Farabi Ibn al-Nadim Al-Majriti Abu Mansur Muwaffaq 11th century Ibn al-Wafid Al-Bīrūnī Avicenna Al-Khwarizmi al-Khati Miskawayh Al-Mu'izz ibn Badis Ahmad ibn 'Imad al-Din 12th century Al-Khazini Artephius Al-Tughrai Al-Nabarawi Abu'l Hasan ibn Arfa Ra'a Abu al-Salt 13th century Ibn al-Baitar Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati Al-Kātibī Attar of Nishapur Al-Simawi Hasan al-Rammah Mansur al-Kamili 14th century Ibn Rassam Al-Jaldaki Abul Ashba ibn Tammam Concepts Takwin Philosopher's stone Al-iksīr Alembic Athanor Works Kitab al-Kimya Kitab al-Sab'een

Perso-Arab musicology Music theorists‎ Al-Kindi Al-Sarakhsi Al-Farabi Avicenna Ikhwan al-Safa Safi al-Din al-Urmawi Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi Ibn Kurr Works Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 105133145 LCCN: n80153725 ISNI: 0000 0001 2103 5956 GND: 118686097 SUDOC: 026857952 BNF: cb11902242t (data) MusicBrainz: ea744cd2-b5dd-403f-a585-45d308d34ca3 NLA: 35874074