Al-Farabi
Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi, known in the Latin West as Alpharabius, was an early Islamic philosopher and music theorist. He has been designated as "Father of Islamic Neoplatonism", and the "Founder of Islamic Political Philosophy".
Al-Farabi's fields of philosophical interest included—but not limited to, philosophy of society and religion; philosophy of language and logic; psychology and epistemology; metaphysics, political philosophy, and ethics. He was an expert in both practical musicianship and music theory, and although he was not intrinsically a scientist, his works incorporate astronomy, mathematics, cosmology, and physics.
Al-Farabi is credited as the first Muslim who presented philosophy as a coherent system in the Islamic world, and created a philosophical system of his own, which developed a philosophical system that went far beyond the scholastic interests of his Greco-Roman Neoplatonism and Syriac Aristotelian precursors. That he was more than a pioneer in Islamic philosophy, can be deduced from the habit of later writers calling him the "Second Master", with Aristotle as the first.
Al-Farabi's impact on philosophy is undeniable, to name a few, Yahya ibn Adi, Abu Sulayman Sijistani, Abu al-Hassan al-Amiri, and Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi; Avicenna, Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra; Avempace, Ibn Tufail, and Averroes; Maimonides, Albertus Magnus, and Leo Strauss. He was known in the Latin West, as well as the Islamic world.
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. Little is known about his life. Early sources include an autobiographical passage where al-Farabi traces the history of logic and philosophy up to his time, and brief mentions by al-Masudi, Ibn al-Nadim and Ibn Hawqal. Said al-Andalusi wrote a biography of al-Farabi. Arabic biographers of the 12th–13th centuries thus had few facts to hand, and used invented stories about his life.From incidental accounts it is known that he spent significant time in Baghdad with Syriac Christian scholars, including the cleric Yuhanna ibn Haylan, Yahya ibn Adi, and Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Baghdadi. He later spent time in Damascus and in Egypt before returning to Damascus where he died in 950–951.
His name was Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Farabi, sometimes with the family surname al-Tarkhani, i.e., the element Tarkhan appears in a nisba. His grandfather was not known among his contemporaries, but a name Awzalagh, in Arabic, suddenly appears later in the writings of Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, and of his great-grandfather in those of Ibn Khallikan.
His birthplace could have been any one of the many places in Central Asia—then known by the name of Khurasan. The word is a Persian term for a locale that is irrigated by effluent springs or flows from a nearby river. Thus, there are many places that carry the name in that general area, such as Farab on the Jaxartes in modern Kazakhstan; Farab, an still-extant village in suburbs of the city of Chaharjuy/Amul on the Oxus Amu Darya in Turkmenistan, on the Silk Road, connecting Merv to Bukhara, or Faryab in Greater Khorasan. The older Persian Parab or Faryab, is a common Persian toponym meaning "lands irrigated by diversion of river water".
Background
While some scholars claim that his ethnic background is not knowable, others describe him as being of either Persian or Turkic origin. Medieval Arab historian Ibn Abi Usaibia —one of al-Farabi's oldest biographer—mentions in his Uyun that al-Farabi's father was of Persian descent. Al-Shahrazuri, who lived around 1288 and has written an early biography, also states that al-Farabi hailed from a Persian family. According to Majid Fakhry, an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, al-Farabi's father "was an army captain of Persian extraction." A Persian origin has been stated by many other sources as well. Dimitri Gutas, Emeritus Professor at Yale University, notes that Farabi's works contain references and glosses in Persian, Sogdian, and even Greek, but not Turkish. Sogdian has also been suggested as his native language and the language of the inhabitants of Farab. Muhammad Javad Mashkoor argues for an Iranian-speaking Central Asian origin. According to Christoph Baumer, he was probably a Sogdian.According to Thérèse-Anne Druart, writing in 2020:
"Scholars have disputed his ethnic origin. Some claimed he was Turkish but more recent research points to him being a Persian."
The oldest known reference to a Turkic origin is given by the medieval historian Ibn Khallikan, who in his work Wafayat states that al-Farabi was born in the small village of Wasij near Farab of Turkic parents. Based on this account, some scholars say he is of Turkic origin. Dimitri Gutas, an American Arabist, criticizes this, saying that Ibn Khallikan's account is aimed at the earlier historical accounts by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, and serves the purpose to "prove" a Turkic origin for al-Farabi, for instance by mentioning the additional nisba "al-Turk" —a nisba al-Farabi never had. However, Abu al-Feda, who copied Ibn Khallekan, changed al-Torkī to the phrase "wa-kana rajolan torkiyan", meaning "he was a Turkish man." In this regard, since works of such supposed Turks lack traces of Turkic nomadic culture, Oxford professor C.E. Bosworth notes that "great figures as Farabi, Biruni, and Avicenna have been attached by over enthusiastic Turkish scholars to their race".
Life and education
Al-Farabi spent most of his scholarly life in Baghdad. In the autobiographical passage preserved by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, al-Farabi stated that he had studied logic, medicine and sociology with Yuhanna ibn Haylan up to and including Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, i.e., according to the order of the books studied in the curriculum, al-Farabi was claiming that he had studied Porphyry's Eisagoge and Aristotle's Categories, De Interpretatione, Prior and Posterior Analytics. His teacher, Yuhanna bin Haylan, was a Nestorian cleric. This period of study was probably in Baghdad, where al-Mas'udi records that Yuhanna died during the reign of al-Muqtadir. In his Appearance of Philosophy, al-Farabi tells us:Philosophy as an academic subject became widespread in the days of the Ptolemaic kings of the Greeks after the death of Aristotle in Alexandria until the end of the woman’s reign . The teaching of it continued unchanged in Alexandria after the death of Aristotle through the reign of thirteen kings... Thus it went until the coming of Christianity. Then the teaching came to an end in Rome while it continued in Alexandria until the king of the Christians looked into the matter. The bishops assembled and took counsel together on which parts of teaching were to be left in place and which were to be discontinued. They formed the opinion that the books on logic were to be taught up to the end of the assertoric figures but not what comes after it, since they thought that would harm Christianity. Teaching the rest remained private until the coming of Islam when the teaching was transferred from Alexandria to Antioch. There it remained for a long time until only one teacher was left. Two men learned from him, and they left, taking the books with them. One of them was from Harran, the other from Marw. As for the man from Marw, two men learned from him..., Ibrahim al-Marwazi and Yuhanna ibn Haylan. .He was in Baghdad at least until the end of September 942, as recorded in notes in his Mabādeʾ ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāżela. He finished the book in Damascus the following year. He also lived and taught for some time in Aleppo. Al-Farabi later visited Egypt, finishing six sections summarizing the book Mabādeʾ, in Egypt in 337/July 948 – June 949 when he returned to Syria, where he was supported by Sayf al-Dawla, the Hamdanid ruler. Al-Mas'udi, writing barely five years after the fact, says that al-Farabi died in Damascus in Rajab 339.
Religious beliefs
Al-Farabi's religious affiliation within Islam is disputed. While some historians identify him as Sunni, some others assert he was Shia or influenced by Shia. Fauzi Najjar argues that al-Farabi's political philosophy was influenced by Shiite sects. Giving a positive account, Nadia Maftouni describes Shi'ite aspects of al-Farabi's writings. As she put it, al-Farabi in his al-Millah, al-Siyasah al-Madaniyah, and Tahsil al-Sa’adah believes in a utopia governed by Prophet and his successors: the Imams.Works and contributions
Al-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.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. He is also credited with 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. 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.