AL-FARABI (947)

Called ALPHARABIUS OR AVENNASAR.

One of the most brilliant and famed of Muslim philosophers; he was known as "the second teacher" (Aristotle being the first).

Very little is known of his personal life. He did not write an autobiography and no contemporary commentaries about him have survived; he was of Turkic origin.

His father was probably in the Turkish bodyguard of the caliph, and as a child al-Farabi probably accompanied him to Baghdad, the seat of the caliphal government (the caliph was the titular leader of the Islamic community).

Al-Farabi was not a member of the court society and neither did he work in the administration of the central government. For reasons that remain unknown he accepted in 942 an invitation from the prince Sayf ad-Dawlah to take up residence at his court. Al-Farabi remained there mostly in Aleppo until the time of his death.

Al-Farabi´s philosophical thinking was nourished in the heritage of the Arabic Aristotelean teachings of 10th-century Baghdad. His great service to Islam was to take the Greek heritage as it had become known to the Arab and show how it could be used to answer questions with which Muslims were struggling. To al-Farabi philosophy had come to an end in other parts of the world, but had a chance for new life in Islam. Islam as a religion was of itself not sufficient for the needs of a philosopher. He saw human reason as being superior to revelation. Religion provided truth in a symbolic form to non-philosophers who were not able to apprehend it in its more pure forms.

The major part of al-Farabi writings were directed to the problem of the correct ordering of the state. JUst as God rules the universe so should the philosopher as the most perfect kind of man rule the state.; he thus relates the political upheavals of his time to the divorce of the philosopher from government.