Reference
Farabi, al- (circa 873-950), the first Islamic philosopher to uphold the primacy of philosophical truth over revelation, claiming that, contrary to the beliefs of various other religions, philosophical truth is the same throughout the world. Born Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan ibn Uzalagh al-Farabi in Fåråb, Transoxiana (now Uzbekistan), of Turkish parentage, his Latin name is Alfarabius. He studied in Khorasan (now in Iran) and then in Baghdad, where his teachers were Christian Syrians expert in Greek philosophy. Eventually he came to live at the court of Sayf ad-Dawlah (916-67), the ruler of Aleppo (now in Syria). Al-Farabi was one of the earliest Islamic thinkers to transmit to the Arab world the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle (which he considered essentially identical), thereby greatly influencing such later Islamic philosophers as Avicenna and Averroës.
Influenced in his metaphysical views by both Aristotle and the Neoplatonist Roman philosopher Plotinus, al-Farabi posited a Supreme Being who had created the world through the exercise of rational intelligence. He believed this same rational faculty to be the sole part of the human being that is immortal, and thus he set as the paramount human goal the development of that rational faculty. Al-Farabi gave considerably more attention to political theory than did any other Islamic philosopher, adapting the Platonic system (as developed in Plato's Republic and Laws) to the contemporary Muslim political situation in The Perfect City.
Al-Farabi formulated as an ideal a universal religion in which all other existing religions are considered symbolic expressions of the universal religion. Of about 100 works by al-Farabi, many have been lost, including his commentaries on Aristotle. Many others have been preserved in medieval Latin translations only. In addition to his philosophical writings, al-Farabi compiled a Catalogue of Sciences, the first Muslim work to attempt a systematization of human knowledge. He also made a contribution to musical theory in his Great Book of Music.
"Farabi, al-," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1993 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1993 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation
