al farabi


Abū Nasr Muhammad ibn al-Farakh al-Fārābi (Nastaliq: ) or Abū Nasr al-Fārābi (in some sources, known as Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan ibn Uzlagh al-Farabi أبو نصر محمد بن محمد بن أوزلغ الفارابي ), also known in the West as Alpharabius, Alfarabi, Al-Farabi, Farabi, and Abunaser (c. 872 – between 14 December, 950 and 12 January, 951) was a Muslim polymath and one of the greatest scientists and philosophers of Persia and the Islamic world in his time. He was also a cosmologist, logician, musician, psychologist and sociologist.


The existing variations in the basic facts about 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). But what is known with certainty is that after finishing his early school years in Farab and Bukhara, Farabi moved to Baghdad in 901 to pursue higher studies. He studied under a Nestorian Christian cleric Yuhanna ibn-Haylan in Harran who abandoned lay interests and engaged in his ecclesiastical duties, and he remained in Baghdad for more than 40 years and acquired mastery over several languages and fields of knowledge. He left Baghdad in 941 and went to Aleppo. There, he was supported and glorified by Saif ad-Daula, the Hamdanid ruler of Syria. He had some other journeys and traveled to Cairo Finally Farabi died in Damascus sometime between 14 December, 950 and 12 January, 951.

There is no consensus on the ethnic background of Farabi. All sources on his ethnic background have been written at least 300 years after Farabi and these few classical primary sources have described his ethnicity differently. Among notable scholars who have done extensive research on Farabi's life and works is Prof. Dimitri Gutas who has examined primary sources dealing with Farabi's background.

Persian origin

The oldest known document regarding his background, written by the medieval Arab historian Ibn Abi Osaybe'a (died in 1269), mentions that al-Farabi's father was of Persian descent. Mohammad Ibn Mahmud Al-Shahruzi who lived around 1288 A.D. and has written an early biography also has stated that Farabi hailed from a Persian family. Ibn al-Nadim, a younger contemporary of Farabi and a close friend of Yahya ibn Adi (Farabi's closest and most successful student), states Farabi's origins to lie in Faryab in Khorasan ("men al-Faryab men ardhµ Khorasan"). Faryab is also the name of a province in today's Afghanistan. The Dehkhoda Dictionary - based on Ibn Abi Osaybe'a's accounts - also calls him Persian mentioning the fact that his father was a member of the Persian-speaking Samanid court of Central Asia. The older Persian form Parab (Persian word meaning cultivated land by streams) is given in the historical account Hodud al-'alam for his birthplace. Farabi has in a number of his works references and glosses in Persian and Sogdian, pointing to an Iranian-speaking Central Asian origin. A Persian origin is also discussed by Peter J. King and some other western sources as well a comprehensive source on Islamic Philosophy written in Arabic by the Egyptian scholar Prof. Hanna Fakhuri.

Turkic origin

The oldest known reference to a possible Turkic (Uzbek) origin is given by the medieval historian Ibn Khallekān (died in 1282), who claimed that Farabi was born in the small village of Wasij near Farab (in what is today Otrar, Kazakhstan) of Turkic parents, and in the following decades and centuries, many others copied his work. But scholars criticize Ibn Khallekān's statement, as it is only aimed to ridicule the earlier reports of Ibn Abi Osaybe'a, and seems to have the sole purpose to prove that Farabi was a Turk. In this context, it is criticized that Ibn Khallekān was also the first to use the additional nisba (surname) "al-Turk" - a nisba Farabi never had. Ibn Khallekān's statement also contradicts Ibn al-Nadim and Yahya bin Adi, both contemporaries of Farabi, who had reported that Farabi's birthplace was Faryab in Khorasan (in modern Afghanistan). Ibn Khallekān's accounts are also partially contradicted by the above mentioned fact that Farabi has in many of his writings references and glosses in Persian, Sogdian, and Greek, but not in Turkish.

However, aside from early Islamic sources and the mentioned controversies, a significant number of sources as well as the Encyclopaedia Britannica consider al-Farabi to be of Turkic, some even of Turkic Seljuq origin.





Music and sociology






Al-Farabi also wrote a rich commentary on Aristotle's work, and one of his most notable works is Al-Madina al-Fadila where he theorized an ideal state as in Plato's The Republic. 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. Influenced by the writings of Aristotle, in The Ideas of the Citizens of the Virtuous City and other books, he advanced the view that philosophy and revelation are two different modes of approaching the same truth. He also may have mentioned Alexander the Great in one of his works.


Al-Farabi is also known for his early investigations into the nature of the existence of void in Islamic physics. In thermodynamics, he appears to have carried out the first experiments concerning the existence of vacuum, in which he investigated handheld plungers in water. He concluded that air's volume can expand to fill available space, and he suggested that the concept of perfect vacuum was incoherent.




Philosophical thought

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. 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, particularly metaphysics and practical (or political) philosophy (which bears more resemblance to Plato's Republic than Aristotle's Politics).

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



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 of itself), and this is related to God only to the extent that God is a principal 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 prolegomena written by al-Farabi.




Epistemology and eschatology






Psychology, the soul and prophetic knowledge



Practical philosophy (ethics and politics)




See also


  • Corbin, Henry; Hossein Nasr and Utman Yahya (1993). History of Islamic Philosophy. Keagan Paul International. ISBN 978-0710304162.

External links


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