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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.[6][page needed] 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”.[7][8] By the 13th century, Fārāb on the Jaxartes was known as Otrār.[9] Origin There is a difference of opinion on the ethnic background of Farabi.[1][10][11] 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."[12] 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 [...]".[13] Iranian origin theory An Iranian stamp bearing an illustration of Al-Farabi's imagined face 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][14] Al-Shahrazūrī who lived around 1288 A.D. and has written an early biography also states that Farabi hailed from a Persian family.[15][16] According to Majid Fakhry, an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, Farabi's father "was an army captain of Persian extraction."[17] 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][18] Sogdian has also been suggested as his native language[19] and the language of the inhabitants of Fārāb.[20] Muhammad Javad Mashkoor argues for an Iranian-speaking Central Asian origin.[21] A Persian origin has been discussed by other sources as well.[22] Turkic origin theory Al-Farabi's imagined face appeared on the currency of the Republic of Kazakhstan The oldest known reference to a possible 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.[23][24][25][26][27][28] Others, such as Dimitri Gutas, criticize this, saying that Ibn Khallikān's account is aimed at the earlier historical accounts by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa, and serves the sole purpose to prove a Turkic origin for al-Farabi, for instance by inventing 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".[29] 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 Saif ad-Daula, the Hamdanid ruler of Syria. Works and Contributions Farabi made contributions to the fields of logic, mathematics, music, philosophy, psychology, and education. Alchemy Al-Farabi wrote: he Necessity of the Art of the Elixir[30] 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.[31] 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.[32] 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.[33] Music Illustration from Kitāb al-mūsīqā al-kabīr. Drawing of a musical instrument, called shahrud Wrote a book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqa (The Book of Music). According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi:[34] the book of Kitab al-Musiqa is in reality a study of the theory of Persian music of his day although in the West it has been introduced as a book on Arab music. He presents philosophical principles about music, its cosmic qualities and its influences. Wrote a treatise Meanings of the Intellect, which dealt with music therapy and discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul.[35] Philosophy Latin translation of Kitab ihsa' al-'ulum (In English, "An Encyclopedia of the Sciences") by Gerard of Cremona 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".[36] Al-Farabi had great influence on science and philosophy for several centuries[citation needed], 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).[37] 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.[38] 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.[38] He may have carried out the first experiments concerning the existence of vacuum, in which he investigated handheld plungers in water.[39] He concluded that air's volume can expand to fill available space, and he suggested that the concept of perfect vacuum was incoherent.[38] 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."[35] In his treatiseOn 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.[35] 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.[40] 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,[41] particularly metaphysics and practical (or political) philosophy (which bears more resemblance to Plato's Republic than Aristotle's Politics).[42] Al Farabi, Aristotle, Maimonides In the handing down of Aristotle’s thought to the Christian west in the middle ages, 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.[43][44][45] However, he tried to gather the ideas of Plato and Aristotle in his book "The gathering of the ideas of the two philosophers".[46] 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[citation needed]. 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.[47] 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.[48] Al-Farabi's cosmology is essentially based upon three pillars: Aristotelian metaphysics of causation, highly developed Plotinian emanational cosmology and the Ptolemaic astronomy.[49] 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.[50] 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[51][52] 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.[53] Al-Farabi (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 of the Islamic Golden Age, who wrote in areas of political philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and logic. He was also a scientist, cosmologist, and a music scholar. 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. |
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