Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr Farabi
Second Master—Magister Secundus
Portrait of Al-Farabi—Alpharabius[A]
Bornc. 870
Faryab, Khorasan or
Farab, Transoxiana[B]
Diedc. 950
Damascus
Other namesSecond Master[C]
Notable workKitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir ("Grand Book of Music"),[D] Ara Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila ("Virtuous City"),[E] Kitab Ihsa al-Ulum ("Enumeration of the Sciences"),[F] Risalah fi'l-Aql (Epistle on the Intellect)[G]
EraIslamic Golden Age
RegionIslamic philosophy
SchoolAristotelianism · Neoplatonism
Main interests
Political Philosophy · Philosophy of Religion · Physics · Metaphysics · Logic · Psychology · Epistemology · Ethics · Music Theory
Notable ideas
Father of Islamic Neoplatonism, Founder of Islamic Political Philosophy
Postage stamp of the USSR, issued on the 1100th anniversary of the birth of Al-Farabi (1975)

Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (Arabic: أبو نصر محمد الفارابي, romanized: Abū Naṣr Muḥammad al-Fārābī; c. 870[1][H] – 14 December 950–12 January 951),[2] known in the Latin West as Alpharabius,[3][I] was an early Islamic philosopher and music theorist.[4] He has been designated as "Father of Islamic Neoplatonism",[5] and the "Founder of Islamic Political Philosophy".[6]

Al-Farabi's fields of philosophical interest included—but not limited to, philosophy of society and religion;[7] philosophy of Language and Logic;[8] psychology and epistemology;[9] metaphysics,[10] political philosophy,[11] and ethics.[12] He was an expert in both practical musicianship and music theory,[13] and although he was not intrinsically a scientist,[14] his works incorporate astronomy,[15] mathematics,[16] cosmology,[17] and physics.[18]

Al-Farabi is credited as the first Muslim who presented philosophy as a coherent system in the Islamic world,[19] and created a philosophical system of his own,[20] which developed a philosophical system that went far beyond the scholastic interests of his Greco-Roman Neoplatonism and Syriac Aristotelian precursors.[21][J] That he was more than a pioneer in Islamic philosophy,[22] can be deduced from the habit of later writers calling him the "Second Master",[23][24][C] 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;[25] Avicenna, Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra;[26] Avempace, Ibn Tufail, and Averroes;[27] Maimonides,[28] Albertus Magnus,[29] and Leo Strauss.[30] He was known in the Latin West,[31] as well as the Islamic world.


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  1. ^ Druart 2021, Intro; Corbin 1993, p. 158; Mahdi & Wright 1970–1980, p. 523a.
  2. ^ Gutas 2012a, § Life; Rudolph 2017, pp. 538–539; Vallat 2020, p. 551b.
  3. ^ Weber 2017, p. 169a.
  4. ^ Druart 2021, Intro; Mahdi & Wright 1970–1980, p. 523a; Streetman 2014, p. 231a.
  5. ^ Fakhry 2002, passim; Netton 1998, summary.
  6. ^ Butterworth 2015, p. 2a; Daiber 1996, p. 848; Galston 1990, p. 5; Mahdi 2010, passim.
  7. ^ Germann, Nadja (Spring 2021). "Farabi's Philosophy of Society and Religion". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  8. ^ Hodges, Wilfrid; Thérèse-Anne Druart (Winter 2020). "Farabi's Philosophy of Logic and Language". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  9. ^ López-Farjeat 2020.
  10. ^ Menn, Stephen (Winter 2021). "Farabi's Metaphysics". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  11. ^ Mahdi 2000, passim.
  12. ^ Fakhry 1994, pp. 78–85.
  13. ^ Sawa 2012, passim.
  14. ^ Madkour 1963–1966, pp. 452–453; Weber 2017, p. 169a.
  15. ^ Dhanani 2007, pp. 356–357.
  16. ^ Shamsi, F. A. (1984). "Farabi's Treatise on Certain Obscurities in Books I and V of Euclid's Elements". Journal for the History of Arabic Science. VIII (1–2): 31–42. ISSN 0379-2927.
  17. ^ Janos, Damien (2012). Method, Structure, and Development in Fārābī's Cosmology. Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science. Texts and Studies. Volume 85. Leiden: Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004217324. ISBN 978-90-04-20615-1. ISSN 0169-8729. S2CID 118794688.
  18. ^ Druart 2021, § 5.
  19. ^ Fakhry 2002, pp. 128 ff.; Gutas 2012b, passim; Reisman 2005, p. 52.
  20. ^ Adamson 2016, p. 63; Gutas 2012b; Netton 1992, p. 1; Rudolph 2017, p. 596.
  21. ^ Adamson 2016, p. 64; Gutas 2012b; Netton 1994, p. 101.
  22. ^ Fakhry 2002, p. vii; Netton 1992, p. 1; Reisman 2005, p. 52.
  23. ^ Adamec, Ludwig W. (2009). Historical Dictionary of Islam. Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements. No. 95 (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. pp. 95–96. ISBN 978-0-8108-6161-9.
  24. ^ Adamson 2016, p. 63; Corbin 1993, p. 58; López-Farjeat 2020, Intro; Netton 1994, p. 99.
  25. ^ Netton 1992, pp. 8–18.
  26. ^ Corbin 1993, pp. 160–165.
  27. ^ Fakhry 2002, pp. 136–146.
  28. ^ Pessin, Sarah (Spring 2007). "The Influence of Islamic Thought on Maimonides". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  29. ^ Vallat 2020, p. 553a.
  30. ^ Brague, Rémi (1998). "Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss's "Muslim" Understanding of Greek Philosophy". Poetics Today. 19 (2): 235–259. doi:10.2307/1773441. ISSN 0333-5372. JSTOR 1773441.
  31. ^ Zonta 2020, pp. 559b–562a.