Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi was a philosopher of the tenth century who worked mainly in Baghdad and later in Syria. Known in the Islamic world as the "Second Teacher", second only to Aristotle, he built the first comprehensive system of Aristotelian philosophy in Arabic, wrote extensively on logic, and produced an influential political philosophy modelled on Plato's Republic. His work laid the foundations on which Avicenna and Averroes later built.

Little is known for certain about al-Farabi's early life, and his origins have long been disputed. He was born around 870, in a place called Farab, but several places of that name existed in Central Asia and the wider Persian world. The thirteenth-century biographer Ibn Khallikan wrote that he was of Turkic descent and came from a village near Farab on the Syr Darya, later known as Otrar, in today's Kazakhstan. Other scholars point to a Farab or Faryab in today's Afghanistan or Turkmenistan and argue for Persian origins. Modern Kazakhstan, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan have all claimed him; the evidence does not settle the question.

Al-Farabi spent most of his working life in Baghdad, capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. In a passage preserved by a later historian, he described how Greek philosophy had passed from Alexandria to the Syriac-speaking world and on to Baghdad, and said he had studied logic with the Christian scholar Yuhanna ibn Haylan, reading Aristotle's works up to and including the Posterior Analytics. He was also associated with Abu Bishr Matta, another Christian logician and translator. Baghdad's philosophers at this time were largely Christians working in the Aristotelian school tradition, and al-Farabi became its leading Muslim member.

He stayed in Baghdad until at least 942, when political disorder led him to move to Syria. He spent time in Aleppo and visited Egypt, then came under the patronage of the Hamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawla. He died in Damascus in the Islamic month of Rajab 339, which corresponds to December 950 or early January 951. Later stories portray him as an ascetic who cared little for wealth, but these are hard to verify.

Al-Farabi wrote commentaries and summaries covering the whole of Aristotle's logic, then known as the Organon, together with the introduction by Porphyry. He treated logic as a universal grammar of thought, distinct from the grammar of any particular language such as Arabic, a position he defended against critics who saw logic as merely Greek grammar in disguise. His Enumeration of the Sciences, a survey of all branches of knowledge, was widely read in Arabic and Latin. He also explored how philosophy relates to religion: in his view philosophy reaches truth through demonstration, while religion expresses the same truths in symbols and images suited to ordinary people.

Al-Farabi combined Aristotle's metaphysics with a Neoplatonic theory of emanation. At the top of reality is the First Cause, God, perfectly one. From it proceeds a chain of intellects, each linked to one of the heavenly spheres, down to the tenth, the Active Intellect, which governs the world below the moon. Human beings come to know universal truths when their minds are actualised by the Active Intellect. The human goal is to perfect the intellect as far as possible, which brings true happiness and, for those who achieve it, a kind of survival after death. This scheme of ten intellects was taken over and refined by Avicenna. His short treatise on the meanings of the word "intellect" was influential in both Arabic and Latin.

He also wrote a work arguing that Plato and Aristotle fundamentally agreed, partly because, like others of his time, he believed the Neoplatonic Theology of Aristotle was genuine.

Al-Farabi's best-known work is The Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City. Drawing on Plato's Republic and Laws, it describes the ideal state as one ruled by a philosopher who has perfect knowledge and is also a prophet able to express truth in images that move the public. The virtuous city is organised like a healthy body, with each member in their proper place, and its aim is the happiness of all its citizens. He contrasted it with ignorant cities devoted to wealth, honour, pleasure or conquest, and with wicked cities that know the good but reject it. Related works, including the Political Regime and the Attainment of Happiness, develop the same themes. He was the first in the Islamic world to treat political philosophy as a central part of philosophy rather than an afterthought.

Al-Farabi was also a major music theorist. His Great Book of Music analyses intervals, scales, rhythm and instruments, including the oud, in mathematical terms, and remained a standard reference in Arabic music theory. Stories that he could make an audience laugh, weep or fall asleep with his playing are legend.

His influence was large. Avicenna recorded that he could not understand Aristotle's Metaphysics until he read a short treatise by al-Farabi explaining its aims. In al-Andalus, Averroes and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who praised al-Farabi's logic highly, both drew on him. Several of his works were translated into Latin and Hebrew in the Middle Ages. He stands with Al-Kindi at the beginning of Islamic philosophy, and he is honoured today as a national figure in Kazakhstan, where the main state university in Almaty bears his name, as well as across the wider Muslim world.