Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (Arabic: أبو نصر محمد الفارابي, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad al-Fārābī;[1] for other recorded variants of his name see below) known in the West as Alpharabius[4] (c. 872[2] – between 14 December 950 and 12 January 951), was a Muslim[2] polymath and one of the greatest scientists and philosophers of the Islamic world in his time. He was also a cosmologist, logician, musician, psychologist and sociologist.
Contents
1 Biography
1.1 Name
1.2 Birthplace
1.3 Origin
1.3.1 Iranic origin
1.3.2 Turkic origin
1.4 Life and Education
2 Contributions
2.1 Alchemy
2.2 Logic
2.3 Music and sociology
2.4 Philosophy
2.5 Physics
2.6 Psychology
3 Philosophical thought
4 Works
4.1 Metaphysics and cosmology
4.2 Epistemology and eschatology
4.3 Psychology, the soul and prophetic knowledge
4.4 Practical philosophy (ethics and politics)
5 See also
6 Literature
7 External links
8 Notes
//
[edit] Biography
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 scanty 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.[5]
[edit] Name
His name was Abū Naṣr Moḥammad b. Moḥammad 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 Moḥammad b. Moḥammad al-Ṭarḵānī, i.e., the element Ṭarḵān appears in a nesba(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 Khallekān. Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa is the first source to list this name which, as Ibn Khallekān 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]
[edit] Birthplace
His brithplace is contradicted in the classical sources as either Faryāb in Khorasan (in modern Afghanistan)[1] or Fārāb on the Amu Darya (Oxus) in modern Kazakhstan.[1] The older Persian[1] Pārāb(in Hudud ul-'alam) or Fāryāb (also Pāryāb), is common Persian toponym meaning “lands irrigated by diversion of river water”.[6][7] By the 13th century, Farab on the Jaxartes was known as Otrār.[8]
[edit] Origin
There exist a difference of opinion on the ethnic background of Farabi.[1][9][10] According to D. 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 [...]"[11]
[edit] Iranic origin
An Iranian stamp bearing an illustration of Al-Farabi
Medieval Arab historian Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa (died in 1269) - al-Farabi's oldest biographer - mentions in his ʿOyūn (final rescension in 1268) that al-Farabi's father was of Persian descent.[1][12] Al-Shahrazūrī who lived around 1288 A.D. and has written an early biography also has stated that Farabi hailed from a Persian family.[13][14] Additionally, Farabi has in a number of his works references and glosses in Persian and Sogdian (and even Greek but no Turkish).[1][15] Sogdian has been mentioned as his native language[16] and the language of the inhabitants of Farab.[17] Mohammad Javad Mashkoor argues for an Iranian-speaking Central Asian origin[18] but states Farabi was foremost a Muslim and was great due to blessing of the Quran and Prophet Muhammad, and hence is a Muslim scholar belonging to all of humanity and whether he was Turkish, Iranian or Arab is not of importance.[18] A Persian origin has been discussed by other sources as well.[19]
[edit] Turkic origin
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 Khallekān (died in 1282), who in his work Wafayāt (completed in 669/1271) states that Farabi was born in the small village of Wasij near Farab (in what is today Otrar, Kazakhstan) of Turkic parents. Based on this account, some modern scholars state his origin to be Turkic.[20] Others, such as D. Gutas, criticize this, saying that Ibn Khallekān's account is aimed at the earlier historical accounts by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa, and servers 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] 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".[21]
[edit] Life and Education
Al-Farabi spent almost his entire life in Baghdad, capital of Abbasids that ruled the Islamic world.[10] In the auto-biographical passage about the appearance of philosophy preserved by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa, Farabi has stated that he had studied logic 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 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.
[edit] Contributions
Farabi made notable contributions to the fields of logic, mathematics, medicine, music, philosophy, psychology and sociology.
[edit] Alchemy
Al-Farabi wrote: The Necessity of the Art of the Elixir[22]
[edit] 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.[23] 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.[24] 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.[25]
[edit] Music and sociology
Farabi wrote books on early Muslim sociology and a notable book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqa (The Book of Music). According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi[26]: 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. Al-Farabi's treatise Meanings of the Intellect dealt with music therapy, where he discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul.[27]
[edit] Philosophy
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
Contents
1 Biography
1.1 Name
1.2 Birthplace
1.3 Origin
1.3.1 Iranic origin
1.3.2 Turkic origin
1.4 Life and Education
2 Contributions
2.1 Alchemy
2.2 Logic
2.3 Music and sociology
2.4 Philosophy
2.5 Physics
2.6 Psychology
3 Philosophical thought
4 Works
4.1 Metaphysics and cosmology
4.2 Epistemology and eschatology
4.3 Psychology, the soul and prophetic knowledge
4.4 Practical philosophy (ethics and politics)
5 See also
6 Literature
7 External links
8 Notes
//
[edit] Biography
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 scanty 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.[5]
[edit] Name
His name was Abū Naṣr Moḥammad b. Moḥammad 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 Moḥammad b. Moḥammad al-Ṭarḵānī, i.e., the element Ṭarḵān appears in a nesba(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 Khallekān. Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa is the first source to list this name which, as Ibn Khallekān 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]
[edit] Birthplace
His brithplace is contradicted in the classical sources as either Faryāb in Khorasan (in modern Afghanistan)[1] or Fārāb on the Amu Darya (Oxus) in modern Kazakhstan.[1] The older Persian[1] Pārāb(in Hudud ul-'alam) or Fāryāb (also Pāryāb), is common Persian toponym meaning “lands irrigated by diversion of river water”.[6][7] By the 13th century, Farab on the Jaxartes was known as Otrār.[8]
[edit] Origin
There exist a difference of opinion on the ethnic background of Farabi.[1][9][10] According to D. 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 [...]"[11]
[edit] Iranic origin
An Iranian stamp bearing an illustration of Al-Farabi
Medieval Arab historian Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa (died in 1269) - al-Farabi's oldest biographer - mentions in his ʿOyūn (final rescension in 1268) that al-Farabi's father was of Persian descent.[1][12] Al-Shahrazūrī who lived around 1288 A.D. and has written an early biography also has stated that Farabi hailed from a Persian family.[13][14] Additionally, Farabi has in a number of his works references and glosses in Persian and Sogdian (and even Greek but no Turkish).[1][15] Sogdian has been mentioned as his native language[16] and the language of the inhabitants of Farab.[17] Mohammad Javad Mashkoor argues for an Iranian-speaking Central Asian origin[18] but states Farabi was foremost a Muslim and was great due to blessing of the Quran and Prophet Muhammad, and hence is a Muslim scholar belonging to all of humanity and whether he was Turkish, Iranian or Arab is not of importance.[18] A Persian origin has been discussed by other sources as well.[19]
[edit] Turkic origin
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 Khallekān (died in 1282), who in his work Wafayāt (completed in 669/1271) states that Farabi was born in the small village of Wasij near Farab (in what is today Otrar, Kazakhstan) of Turkic parents. Based on this account, some modern scholars state his origin to be Turkic.[20] Others, such as D. Gutas, criticize this, saying that Ibn Khallekān's account is aimed at the earlier historical accounts by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa, and servers 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] 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".[21]
[edit] Life and Education
Al-Farabi spent almost his entire life in Baghdad, capital of Abbasids that ruled the Islamic world.[10] In the auto-biographical passage about the appearance of philosophy preserved by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa, Farabi has stated that he had studied logic 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 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.
[edit] Contributions
Farabi made notable contributions to the fields of logic, mathematics, medicine, music, philosophy, psychology and sociology.
[edit] Alchemy
Al-Farabi wrote: The Necessity of the Art of the Elixir[22]
[edit] 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.[23] 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.[24] 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.[25]
[edit] Music and sociology
Farabi wrote books on early Muslim sociology and a notable book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqa (The Book of Music). According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi[26]: 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. Al-Farabi's treatise Meanings of the Intellect dealt with music therapy, where he discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul.[27]
[edit] Philosophy
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
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